A Levittown woman who shot and killed her husband in public at the Bristol Wharf two years ago was sentenced to 10 to 30 years in state prison on Tuesday. At the hearing, she described years of domestic abuse she had endured from her estranged spouse Faisal Iqbal.
Sammar Khan, 42, pleaded guilty in July to third-degree murder for shooting Iqbal, 38, in a grassy area of the park on the Delaware River waterfront the morning of May 30, 2023. Khan died of multiple gunshot wounds. The Bucks County Courier Times reported the shooting happened in front of Khan and Iqbal’s 5-year-old son.
Witnesses at the park told police they saw the couple arguing near the edge of the water and then heard a “pop” sound. Iqbal wrestled with Khan and several more shots were fired. Khan and Iqbal then walked to the parking lot, where Iqbal asked a witness to call 911. Khan shot Iqbal two more times, causing him to fall to the ground, before she fired more bullets at Iqbal, striking him in the head and torso, investigators said.
Police phone records documented at least 24 times that Khan had called 911 between 2014 and 2023 to report Iqbal’s behavior, according to the Courier Times. Court records showed Khan had a protection from abuse order and Iqbal had been arrested in 2022 after he violated the PFA a third time.
The Inquirer wrote that Khan described a decade of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the sentencing hearing. Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin M. McElroy said the prosecution did not dispute Khan’s history of domestic violence, but she also said the abuse did not justify Khan’s actions.
Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Finley agreed with the prosecutor, and according to the Inquirer, said “That does not give you the lawful right to gun down an individual and execute them, There is no justification for doing that.”
Khan had faced a maximum of 40 years in prison for the third-degree murder charge.
Remiah Ward’s shift at the SmartStyle salon inside Walmart was almost over, and she’d barely made $30 in tips from the haircuts she’d done that day. It wasn’t unusual — a year after her graduation from beauty school, tips plus minimum wage weren’t enough to cover her rent.
She scarcely had time to eat and sleep before she had to drive back to the same Walmart in central Florida to stock shelves on the night shift. That job paid $14 an hour, but it meant she sometimes spent 18 hours a day in the same building. She worked six days a week but still struggled to catch up on bills and sleep.
The admissions officer at the American Institute of Beauty, where she enrolled straight out of high school, had sold her on a different dream. She would easily earn enough to pay back the $10,000 she borrowed to attend, she said she was told. Ward had no way of knowing that stylists from her school earn $20,200 a year, on average, four years after graduating. Seven years later, her debt, plus interest, is still unpaid.
In July, Republicans in Congress pushed through policies aimed at ensuring that what happened to Ward wouldn’t happen to other Americans on the government’s dime; colleges whose graduates don’t earn at least as much as someone with a high school diploma will now risk losing access to federal student loans. But one group managed to slip through the cracks — thousands of schools like the American Institute of Beauty were exempt.
Remiah Ward worked two jobs while trying to make it as a hair stylist but never made enough to pay her all her bills and has had to put her dream career on hold. Credit: Courtesy Remiah Ward
Certificate schools succeeded in getting a carve-out. The industry breathed a collective sigh of relief, and with good reason. At least 1,280 certificate-granting programs, which enrolled more than 220,000 students, would have been at risk of losing federal student loan funding if they had been included in the bill, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data. [See table.] About 80% of those are for-profit programs, and 45 percent are cosmetology schools.
“There is this very strange donut hole in accountability where workforce programs are held accountable, two-year degree programs are held accountable, but everything in between gets off without any accountability,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.
The schools spared are known as certificate programs and, with their promise of an affordable and relatively quick path to economic security, are the fastest growing part of higher education. They usually take about a year to complete and train people to be hair-stylists, welders, medical assistants and cooks, among other jobs.
As with traditional colleges, there are big differences in quality among certificate programs. Some hair stylists can make a middle-class living if they work in a busy salon. But for people who have to pay back hefty student loans, the low wages for stylists in the early years can be an insurmountable obstacle.
Ward found herself facing that dilemma. When she could no longer sustain the lack of sleep from her double shifts at Walmart, she pressed pause on her styling career and took a job with Amazon, loading and unloading planes. She wasn’t ready to give up her dream career, though, so in addition to her 10-hour days moving boxes, she took part-time gigs at local hair salons. She didn’t have family to help pay rent, not to mention loan payments, so she couldn’t afford to work fulltime at a salon, which is essential to build up a regular clientele — and bigger tips. Without that, she couldn’t get much beyond minimum wage.
A representative from the American Institute of Beauty denied that Ward was told she would easily repay her loan.
“No admissions representative, not at AIB or elsewhere, would ever make such a statement,” Denise Herman, general counsel and assistant vice president of AIB, said in an email.
The high cost of many for-profit cosmetology schools — tuition can be upward of $20,000, usually for a one-year program — can leave former students mired in debt. In May, the government released data showing 850 colleges where at least a third of borrowers haven’t made a loan payment for 90 days or more, putting them on track to default. About 42 percent of those were for-profit cosmetology and barbering schools (including AIB).
Brittany Mcnew says she loves working as a stylist but that her income takes a hit when traffic is slow in her salon in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report
Herman blamed the Biden administration policy that after the pandemic let borrowers forgo payments without any penalty.
“Debtors became ‘comfortable’ not making payments,” said Herman. “AIB provides the graduate with the information graduates need to make their payments. What that graduate decides to pay, or not pay, is not influenced by AIB.”
Under the “big beautiful bill” passed in July, two- and four-year colleges must ensure that, after four years, graduates on average make at least as much as someone in their state who has only a high school diploma. The colleges must inform students if they fail that test, and if it happens for two out of three years, the college will be ineligible to receive federal loan funds.
Some for-profit certificate schools lobbied hard for an exemption. The American Association of Career Schools, which represents proprietary cosmetology schools, spent $120,000 lobbying the Education Department and Congress, including on the “big beautiful bill,” in the first six months of this year. At the group’s major lobbying event in April, Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was the keynote speaker.
Cassidy declined to answer questions about why certificate programs were excluded, but a fact sheet from his committee noted that they are already covered by something else, the gainful employment rule, which is also being challenged by the for-profit cosmetology industry.
That federal gainful employment regulation, updated in 2023, requires in essence that graduates from career-oriented schools earn enough to be able to pay back their loans and earn more than a high school graduate. It also requires that consumers, like Ward, be given more information about how graduates from all colleges fare in the workplace.
The rule posed an existential threat to a huge swath of cosmetology schools.
In 2023, the American Association of Career Schools sued to block the gainful employment rule.
“AACS supports fair and reasonable accountability measures,” Cecil Kidd, the AACS’s executive director, said in an email. “However, we strongly object to arbitrary or discriminatory policies such as the US Department of Education’s Gainful Employment rule, which unfairly targets career schools while exempting many public and private non-profit institutions that fail to meet comparable outcomes.”
He pointed to public comments in which AACS has argued that the rule imposes an unfair burden on cosmetology schools since stylists are predominantly women, who are more likely to have “personal commitments” that affect their earnings, and who rely on tips that are often pocketed as unreported income.
Cameron Vandenboom is a successful hair stylist but says the high cost of her private beauty school wasn’t worth thousands of dollars in student debt: “I absolutely should have gone to community college.” Credit: Courtesy Shanna Kaye Photo
In a twist that surprised advocates on both sides, the Education Department in May asked the court to effectively dismiss AACS’ lawsuit.
If the court rules in favor of the cosmetology schools, certificate programs will be free of all accountability requirements on their graduates’ earning levels, because they got the carveout in July.
Even if the court rules against cosmetology schools, advocates are pessimistic that the Trump administration will implement the gainful rules. The first Trump administration got rid of the original rules back in 2019 and Nicholas Kent, now the U.S. undersecretary of education, was previously the chief policy officer for Career Education Colleges and Universities, or CECU, the trade group that represents for-profit colleges, including certificate programs. He is a well-known critic of the rule.
“I would be very surprised, if the unlikely scenario plays out that the Biden rule is upheld, that this Department of Education would just say, OK, the court has spoken,” said Jason Altmire, CECU’s executive director. “We are not opposed to accountability for certificate programs, so long as it’s fair to everybody and we have a voice in how you’re measuring programs.”
Altmire said CECU didn’t lobby for certificate programs to be carved out of Congress’ bill, but did argue against the earnings formula that Congress landed on. Altmire said it doesn’t take into account part-time work and the gender gap in wages.
One objection from AACS, raised by CECU as well, is that the earnings measured don’t include tips, which are crucial to hair stylists’ income. Analyzed without including tips, 576 of 724 cosmetology schools in the Hechinger Report analysis would fail Congress’ earnings test. But even if tips were included and raised stylists’ income by 20 percent, 526 cosmetology schools would still fail.
Earlier this year, Remiah Ward made the difficult decision to leave Florida and move to Kentucky, where the cost of living was more forgiving. She’s working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. at an aluminum factory for $19.50 an hour.
One day, she might go back to styling after her debt is paid off. Like many former beauty school students, she wishes she’d had more information when she decided to enroll.
“They really sugar-coated it. I was 18 years old, and I needed a trade that I was already pretty good at,” said Ward, who is now 26. “Everybody thinks they’re going to make a high return, and it’s just not the reality.”
Marina Villeneuve contributed data analysis to this story.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Schools that train hairstylists, dental assistants and health aides will be able to keep getting federal student loan dollars even if the professionals they turn out don’t end up earning any more than a high school graduate.
That’s because programs like those, which don’t end in a college degree, were granted an exemption from new accountability measures under President Donald Trump’s ”big, beautiful bill.”
A Hechinger Report analysis of federal data found at least 1,280 such certificate programs could have been at risk of their students losing access to federal student loans — but a successful lobbying effort excluded them from the accountability measures.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.
Under the new law, most graduates of associate, bachelor’s and graduate degree programs must earn at least as much as someone who has only a high school diploma. If programs fail to hit that benchmark for two out of three years, their students will no longer be eligible for federal student loans. (And the schools must warn students of this possibility if they miss the mark for just one year). Without that borrowing power, many students could not afford to attend. And without those students, some of the schools might not survive.
Using the table below, see which certificate programs might have been flagged under the Trump law if not for the exemption. If graduates of a particular program ended up earning less than adults with only a high school diploma, that program could have faced losing eligibility for federal student loans under the Trump law.
Methodology
What exactly does the “big, beautiful bill” call for?
The legislation requires the Department of Education to compare earnings of working adults who have only a high school diploma to the earnings of adults four years after they complete a degree program or graduate certificate. If a postsecondary program’s graduates fail to outearn adults with only high school degrees for two out of three years, students can no longer obtain federal student loans to attend that program.
The law also sets up an appeals process and a way for programs to apply to regain eligibility for federal student loans.
What data was analyzed?
The law directs the education secretary to use census data to calculate median earnings for working adults with only a high school degree in the state where a program is located. The Department of Education will release regulations that spell out exactly how to do that math. For example, the law does not spell out whether it will look at census data averaged out over 12 months or a longer period of time.
For earnings data for high school graduates, The Hechinger Report relied on calculations from the Department of Education, which were derived from the 2022 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates Public Use Microdata Sample from the U.S. Census Bureau.
To calculate median earnings for graduates, the law directs the Education Department to put together earnings data for a cohort of at least 30 graduates who received federal student aid for postsecondary education — which typically includes grants, loans or work-study. Graduates are excluded if they’re currently enrolled in another higher education program. If there are fewer than 30 students in a cohort, the Education Department can lump together several years of data to get to 30 students.
To get earnings data for graduates of certificate programs, Hechinger used a federal database known as College Scorecard. We downloaded field of study data for the 2022-23 school year. From this data, The Hechinger Report extracted information about certificate programs, at their main campuses, and included only programs that had median earnings data. The federal database suppresses earnings data for small programs. That left 4,431 currently operating certificate programs.
How was a program determined to be at possible risk of failing the accountability measure?
For each program, The Hechinger Report compared median graduate earnings to the high school graduate earnings data of the state where the program was located. If the graduates earned less, the program was considered to be at risk.
Under the law, postsecondary programs that don’t meet the earnings benchmark for one year have to inform all current students that they are at risk of losing their eligibility for federal student loans.
Are there any limitations to the data?
The “big, beautiful bill” takes online programs into account by considering whether students live in the same state where their academic program is based. Under the law, student earnings are compared with national data rather than state data when fewer than half of enrolled students live in the state where the school is located, which may be the case for online programs.
The Hechinger Report’s analysis instead compares every program with state earnings. That’s because the College Scorecard field of study data set is limited and only includes information about graduates employed within the same state as the institution, not whether enrolled students live in the same state as the program. In addition, College Scorecard data provides earnings data for all graduates without a breakdown for whether they receive federal aid.
Also, the Hechinger database looks at the available median earnings of all students four years after graduation for the school year 2022-23, regardless of the number of graduates. Though College Scorecard suppresses data on smaller programs, median earnings data is available for programs with 16 or more working graduates. The “big, beautiful bill” directs the Department of Education to instead lump together years of data to create cohorts of at least 30 students.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The office responsible for independent oversight of Denver’s law enforcement agencies is doing too much of its work in secret, a city audit found.
The Office of Independent Monitor, which provides civilian oversight for the Denver Police Department and Denver Sheriff Department, has not publicly reported its recommendations about law enforcement misconduct investigations and disciplinary actions for years, undermining the effectiveness of its oversight, city auditor Tim O’Brien found.
“Because the public doesn’t know what guidance the Monitor’s Office is giving to the police and sheriff departments, the public doesn’t know whether those departments are responding. There is no visible proof of accountability,” he said in a Thursday news release. “The lack of transparency is a disservice to law enforcement oversight.”
The independent monitor’s office is also not publicly reporting its reviews and evaluations of the two agencies’ policies and practices, and isn’t thoroughly tracking its work. The office lacks a formalized strategic plan, the audit found.
Former Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and City Council members created the office in 2004 to provide independent oversight for the police and sheriff’s departments in the wake of two controversial police shootings. The monitor’s office reviews police and sheriff disciplinary cases and makes recommendations to the agencies about those cases that are aimed at improving discipline, policies and practices.
The police and sheriff’s departments do not have to follow the monitor’s recommendations. Because the monitor’s office has not publicly reported its recommendations, it is difficult to tell what sort of changes the office has pursued and whether public safety officials accepted or ignored the monitor’s recommendations, the audit found.
Denver’s ordinances require the Office of Independent Monitor to publicly report on disciplinary investigations and policy changes in its annual report, but also limit the office’s ability to do so because the materials are subject to deliberative process privilege, which allows information to be kept from the public if disclosing it would prevent honest and frank discussion within government.
“We found legal guidance from the City Attorney’s Office is affecting what the Monitor’s Office publicly reports in terms of its oversight of the Police and Sheriff Departments,” the audit states. “A significant portion of what city ordinance tells the Monitor’s Office to publicly report is protected by the deliberative process privilege — according to the City Attorney’s Office’s interpretation.”
The audit called for those conflicting mandates to be rectified and suggested the monitor’s office could hire an outside attorney who does not work for the city. Lisabeth Pérez Castle, the independent monitor, agreed to consider potential changes to the office’s approach to public reporting by the spring of 2026, according to responses she provided the auditor’s office.
The auditors also took issue with the monitor’s practice of sending a draft of its annual report to the city attorney, the mayor’s office and public safety officials for review and feedback before the report is published, finding the practice could undermine the monitor’s independence.
“The Monitor’s Office could greatly improve its functional and perceived independence by working to eliminate or minimize the influence of other city agencies in its public reporting,” the audit reads.
Pérez Castle agreed with all of the auditors’ recommendations — including that the office should create a formalized strategic plan — and committed to making changes over the next year. She did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.
Philadelphia residents who receive a suspicious text message claiming to be from the city’s Department of Revenue should not click on any links or provide sensitive information to the sender, city officials said Tuesday.
The phishing scam — sent out Monday and Tuesday — tells recipients that the revenue department has processed a “refund request” that can be redeemed by following a link to provide payment information. The message claims that failure to submit banking information will disqualify residents from accessing refunds.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, the revenue department confirmed the text messages are fraudulent and said the texts contain malicious links. The department said it would never request bank or refund-sensitive information via text message.
Officials said there is no evidence that city databases have been breached or that any taxpayer data has been compromised.
Residents who have shared personal or financial information are advised to report it to the FBI’s 24/7 regional tip line at 215-418-4000. Tips also can be submitted online to the FBI or the federal Internet Crimes Complaint Center.
City officials said people should always be skeptical about unsolicited requests for sensitive information and report suspicious activity. Only websites with the phila.gov domain should be trusted. The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General has additional tips on how people can identify and protect themselves from phishing scams.
Authorities announced on Friday morning that they made progress in solving a mystery that has gripped the nation for two days: who murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk with a rifle during a crowded event at Utah Valley University.
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson had been turned in by his family after he “confessed to them or implied” his guilt in the assassination. A roommate also showed police Discord chat messages from Robinson about hiding a rifle, according to Cox, who said that Robinson acted alone.
Without those tips, it’s hard to know how long the manhunt would have gone on for. The night before, authorities had signaled that they were completely stumped. Officials pleaded with the public for information based on a few grainy surveillance stills on Thursday night, and Utah Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason told NBC News that authorities had “no idea” where the shooter was.
Progressive critics—as well as conservative consigliere Chris Rufo—have accused FBI Director Kash Patel of bungling the investigation. Patel had caused major confusion by implying on social media that the FBI had caught the shooter, only to announce that the “subject” had been released after interrogation. That man, who was completely innocent, suffered a flood of threats after his name and photo were publicized.
Adding to the confusion, police were also filmed escorting a local elderly gadfly out of the event while the crowd blamed him for the shooting. And to make matters worse, internet sleuths misidentified him as yet another innocent person who was nowhere near Utah at the time.
Of course, chaos and mistakes are an unavoidable part of crises. Thankfully, none of these mistakes led to anyone’s death, as they have in the past. It will take a while for the full story behind the Kirkinvestigation to come out, to understand which errors were understandable and which were inexcusable.
At the very least, the manner of Robinson’s arrest throws cold water on the idea that mass spying and heavy-handed police powers are the solution to dramatic crimes. In his post lambasting Patel’s leadership, Rufo also called for “a campaign to disrupt domestic terror networks” and “to investigate, infiltrate, and disrupt the violent movements—of whatever ideology—that threaten the peace in the United States.”
But it’s not clear that more aggressive political surveillance would have stopped or caught the suspected assassin. The photos that identified him came from old-fashioned security cameras in a hallway, which captured him walking up a stairway and then jumping off the roof after the assassination. Robinson’s father, a longtime sheriff’s deputy, reportedly recognized his son from the photos and told him to turn himself in.
Meanwhile, the release of the surveillance photos had led to a flood of tips that wasted the authorities’ time. At the Thursday night press conference, Cox said that authorities were sifting through 7,000 tips from the public.
“It is clear they do not know the name of the suspect, that they don’t have a cellphone track, they don’t have fingerprints, DNA, or digital footprint,” journalist John Solomon, who is close to Patel, told Fox News after the press conference. “And that’s why they’re putting so much personally identifying information up, to try to help get the public to find something that’s there.”
And the assassination did not come out of an organized political network that could be infiltrated. Although there are signs pointing to a left-wing motive—Cox said that a family member told police that Robinson was angry about Kirk coming to Utah because of his political beliefs—Robinson seems to be, like many other shooting suspects, a lone wolf who spent too much time on the internet.
An internal law enforcement bulletin, leaked to the press, initially reported that the shooter had written messages about “transgender and anti-fascist ideology” on bullet casings. Those turned out to be a mix of references to the video game Helldivers 2 (which features killing fascists) and lewd jokes. “If you read this you are gay LMAO,” one of the casings read. Another mocked the “furry” fetish subculture.
An eccentric personality with no criminal record who plays lots of video games and dislikes conservatives is a pretty broad profile, one that covers potentially millions of people. Most of them are neither violent nor members of organized political “networks” that could be disrupted. If the past few days are any indication, encouraging mass online reporting of anyone suspicious can actually make the police’s job harder.
Using Kirk’s murder to tighten government restrictions would not only be ineffective at preventing more incidents like it. It would also be an unfortunate rebuke to Kirk, who often preached freedom over control.
A statue of Humpty Dumpty was ripped from its fixture at Cape May’s Ocean Putt Golf and then discarded at a property a few blocks away, police said Wednesday.
Two men were caught on surveillance video entering the mini golf course at Jackson Street and Beach Avenue around 4 a.m. on Sunday. In the video shot from across the street, one of the suspects climbs over the fence and walks up to the fabled egg that’s a fixture at one of the holes. The man wrestles with it briefly before ripping it from its mount and walking off with it.
Authorities said Humpty Dumpty was found a few blocks away. Police shared a photo of the toppled statue in the back of a pickup truck. Its top hat and one of its hands were broken off by the thieves.
Ocean Putt Golf, which has been a family-owned business at the shore community since 1964, could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday afternoon. It’s unknown whether the statue has been returned to the business, which promoted Humpty Dumpty on Instagram ahead of Memorial Day weekend this year.
The Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme, first recorded in late 18th century England and translated into various languages, tells the tale of a poor egg that takes a “great fall” from a wall and cracks into pieces. It’s said that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Cape May police shared three additional videos on Facebook that show the two suspects walking together on nearby streets around the time of the incident. Police said anyone with information about the suspects can call police at 609-385-0486.
A bicyclist was struck and killed by a speeding driver in a hit-and-run crash Tuesday morning in West Philadelphia, police said.
The crash happened around 9:50 a.m. on the 1600 block of Belmont Avenue, a section of Fairmount Park near the Please Touch Museum and the Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center.
A black Dodge Charger and a black Chrysler were both speeding along Belmont Avenue as they approached Avenue of the Republic, where the cyclist was traveling east when he was struck by one of the vehicles, police said. The cyclist was thrown from his bike and later taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died from his injuries. He has not been identified.
On the way to the scene, investigators spotted the Dodge Charger parked on the side of the 3200 block of Sedgley Avenue. Police said they observed a group of men who appeared to be inspecting the front end of the car for damage. Officers stopped to investigate and seized the vehicle. Authorities did not provide details on the whereabouts of the Chrysler and whether the driver of that car is sought in the investigation.
No arrests have been made, police said.
The crash marks the fourth time this year that a cyclist has been killed in a collision with a car in the city. There were three cyclists killed in crashes in Philadelphia last year, down from 10 in 2023. Earlier this year, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reported that traffic deaths in the city have plateaued in recent years after spiking at 158 in 2020. There were 124 traffic deaths last year and 64 this year, including Tuesday morning’s crash.
In this year’s budget, Philadelphia made a $30 million investment over the next six years in the city’s Vision Zero initiative to improve traffic safety. The increase in funding came a year after Mayor Cherelle Parker had made cuts to the Vision Zero program. The city saw an uptick in activism among cyclists after 30-year-old Barbara Friedes, a doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was fatally struck by a drunk driver in Rittenhouse in July 2024. The driver in that case was sentenced to spend between six and 20 years in prison.
Police said anyone with information about Tuesday’s hit-and-run crash can call the department’s tip line at 215-686-8477 or submit an anonymous tip online.
Villanova University went on lockdown Thursday afternoon following reports of an active shooter on campus, only for the president to send an email over an hour later describing the situation as a “cruel hoax.”
Around 4:30 p.m., the school sent an alert for students and staff on campus to stay clear of the Charles Widger School of Law, lock or barricade doors and move to a secure location. The Radnor Township Police Department said it was on location and asked anyone on campus to shelter in place.
Freshman orientation at the Delaware County school started Wednesday, with events scheduled through Sunday. On Thursday, an opening mass for students was scheduled for 4:15-5:15 p.m. on the Rowan Campus Green.
“Today, as we are celebrating Orientation Mass to welcome our newest Villanovans and their families to our community, panic and terror ensued with the news of a possible shooter at the Law School,” Villanova President the Rev. Peter M. Donohue said in an email to students and their families that was sent at 6 p.m. “Mercifully, no one was injured, and we now know that it was a cruel hoax — there was no active shooter, no injuries and no evidence of firearms present on campus. While that is a blessing and relief, I know today’s events have shaken our entire community.”
Earlier Thursday, a similar incident unfolded at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Authorities there received a call about an active shooter on the school’s campus around 12:30 p.m. Investigators placed the university on lockdown, but later reported there was “no longer a threat.”
The incident in Tennessee is being investigated as a possible case of swatting, a term used when prank calls are made to emergency services to prompt a large police response. The FBI is assisting with the investigation in Chattanooga.
Shortly after 5:30 p.m., Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer arrived at Villanova’s campus and told 6ABC that investigators were actively searching for an armed suspect.
“We believe there is a shooter who’s in one of these buildings,” he said. “We have law enforcement from the entire tri-state area here, and we are going door to door, room to room if we have to, to make this situation under control and to make this campus safe.”
Just after 6:15 p.m., Stollsteimer confirmed the report of a shooting was a hoax. He said the 911 call came in around 4:30 p.m. and a person claimed there was an active shooter in a building that’s part of Villanova’s Charles Widger School of Law. The caller falsely told authorities at least one person had been wounded.
Courtenay Harris Bond/PhillyVoice
Law enforcement agencies from throughout the region responded to reports of an active shooter at Villanova University on Thursday. The reports were a hoax, investigators say. The photo above was taken after the lockdown was lifted.
“We are going to conduct a full investigation. Our federal partners are with us as well,” Stollsteimer said. “… We’re all going to work to try to get to the bottom of who might have done this. If this was indeed a cruel hoax, this is a crime and we will track you down if it’s the last thing we do.”
Stollsteimer declined to discuss details about how investigators will attempt to trace the 911 call.
Gov. Josh Shapiro in a post on X called it “a cruel swatting incident” and said he directed the state police “to use every tool at our disposal to find the person or people who called in this fake threat and hold them accountable.”
The Widger School of Law is part of Villanova’s main campus, but it’s separated from most of the college’s other academic buildings by SEPTA’s Paoli/Thorndale Regional Rail line. The law school is located on Spring Mill Road across from multiple student residence buildings.
A PhillyVoice staff member who was on campus Thursday for events to welcome new students and their families said she and others were locked inside the Villanova bookstore, which is located across the law school. The lights were turned off and people were hiding in the store’s clothing racks, she said.
An X user, who said he was on campus to help move in his sister, an incoming freshman, posted a photo from inside a room that showed furniture piled in front of the door.
“Barricaded to the best of our ability,” Luke Sullivan wrote.
This is a developing story and will be updated as information is available.
Senior staff writer Kristin Hunt contributed to this report.
Pink cocaine, a drug cocktail ingested in either pill or powder form that consists of ecstasy, ketamine, caffeine and a psychedelic used to treat sexual dysfunction known as 2-CB or Tusi, was found in Payne’s system following his tragic death last week.
According to a lawsuit filed back in February producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, Diddy’s chief of staff Kristina Khorram demanded “all employees from the butler, the chef to the housekeepers, to walk around” with that substance, as well as cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana gummies and the date rape drug GHB.
A male opened fire at a gathering in North Philly near Fotteral Square early Saturday morning, resulting in seven people being shot and injured, with one of them in critical condition.
Police responded to an “Instagram party” formed on the 1100 block of Cumberland Street at 3:25 a.m. They say that two males were in a dispute while people began to leave. One of the males returned to the block and began opening fire on the crowd, injuring several partygoers.
Authorities secured the scene, but no arrests were made. Over 50 shots were fired, with police recovering a weapon along with .45 caliber, .40 caliber and 9mm shell casings at the scene. The offender was wearing all black, according to police.
All wounded were transported to Temple University Hospital. A 16-year-old girl who was shot in the chest is listed in critical condition.
Those injured include a 22-year-old man shot in the back, a 20-year-old man shot in the right arm and right hand, a 21-year-old woman shot in the left thigh, a 25-year-old man shot in the right arm, a 30-year-old woman shot in the left arm and a 23-year-old woman shot in the back. All six are labeled in stable condition.
Philadelphia Police says that anyone with information about the mass shooting can contact the Shooting Investigation Group at (215) 686-8270 or leave anonymous tips through phone call or text through (215) 686-8477.
A man was shot and killed by a police officer after he allegedly charged at police with a machete and hatchet on Saturday night in East Greenville, authorities say.
At 8:08 p.m., East Greenville Police responded to a “domestic-related” call on the 100 block of Cherry Street, after an 18 year old called to report a physical assault, according to a release from the Montgomery County district attorney’s office. Upon arrival, officers found a man barricaded in the basement of the home and threatening to harm law enforcement.
Additional police from multiple agencies responded, and they made “numerous” attempts to negotiate with the man, authorities say.
At 11:30 p.m., officers breached the basement door, and found the man armed with a machete and hatchet, authorities say. The man allegedly charged at police and refused commands to drop his weapons. According to the district attorney’s office, an officer tried to use a taser on the man but that did not stop him.
An Upper Perk police officer discharged his firearm and struck the man, authorities say. Police officers rendered aid to the man, but he died at the scene at 12:05 a.m. on Sunday.
The names of the man and the police officer involved in the shooting are not being released at this time.
Montgomery County detectives are investigating the shooting, and anyone with information can contact them at 610-278-3368.
Three people were indicted Thursday on federal charges with bribery for allegedly conspiring to smuggle weapons, narcotics and phones into the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center in Holmesburg.
Breyanna Cornish, 29, and Jawayne Brown, 40, of Philadelphia, allegedly plotted with Ahmad Nasir, 43, an inmate currently at SCI Greene, a maximum-security prison in Franklin Township, Pennsylvania.
Brown and Nasir received additional charges for conspiracy to possess Suboxone with intent to distribute. The Schedule III controlled substance is typically used to treat opioid addiction.
The trio now face potentially lengthy sentences and hefty fines. If convicted, Cornish could spend up 15 years in prison and pay a $500,000 fine, while Brown would face a maximum sentence of 25 years and a $1 million fine. Nasir faces the steepest sentence, with a possible 35 years’ imprisonment and $1.5 million fine.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not release further details on the alleged conspiracy. The Federal Bureau of Investigation led the case.
Frozen human remains that were found in a cave on the Appalachian Trail nearly five decades ago have finally been identified as a Montgomery County man who had died from a drug overdose before a pair of hikers located his body, the Berks County Coroner’s Office said Tuesday.
Nicholas Paul Grubb, 27, had long been referred to as “Pinnacle Man” because his remains were found at a high point of the trail known as the Pinnacle in Albany Township, which is about 65 miles northwest of his hometown of Fort Washington. Grubb’s body was found in January 1977 during one of the coldest winters in Pennsylvania’s history, when temperatures had averaged in the single digits, authorities said.
On Tuesday, Berks County Coroner John Fielding III said the breakthrough in the cold case was achieved using an old fingerprint card that was recovered by an investigator earlier this month. The discovery enabled authorities to identify Grubb after past attempts to do so with DNA and other methods had failed.
The hikers found Grubb’s remains on Jan. 16, 1977. The next day, an autopsy was conducted at Reading Hospital and it was determined Grubb had died from an overdose of phenobarbital and pentobarbital, which are both barbiturate drugs. At the time, the medical examiner concluded that the cause of death was suicide. Grubb, whose body went unclaimed, was buried at Potter’s Field in Berks County.
At the time the remains were discovered, investigators said there were no signs of foul play. Grubb was described as a white male between 25 and 35 years old. He had a full beard and a scar in the shape of the letter “T” on the left side of his chin. He was found wearing Wrangler blue jeans and a buckskin jacket with tassels on the sleeves and torso. He also wore hiking boots and appeared to have gone to the trail prepared to handle the harsh elements.
Over the ensuing decades, the coroner’s office tried to determine Grubb’s identity using various technologies that had emerged with advances in forensics. Grubb’s body was exhumed from Potter’s Field in 2019 and bone samples were sent to labs on two separate occasions for DNA extraction. Efforts to match Grubb’s‘ DNA with records in a national database of unidentified remains did not yield results. Investigators also tried a method known as craniofacial reconstruction, which attempts to model faces using skeletal remains.
The case took a turn earlier this month when an FBI expert located an original, ink-and-paper fingerprint card that contained Grubb’s prints, the Reading Eagle reported. In years past, the coroner’s office had been relying on a copy of the card that was too deteriorated to make a definitive match. The original card was found in records that were not immediately accessible, Fielding said. Fingerprint technology has since advanced to use digital scanners.
Once the fingerprint card was located, Pinnacle Man’s prints were submitted to a national database on Aug. 12. A match with Grubb was made within an hour using another copy of his fingerprints that were on record from police in Colorado, where Grubb had once lived and had an interaction with law enforcement.
“For 47 years, this man remained unidentified,” Fielding said. “A nameless figure in a long-forgotten case. But today I’m honored to announce that through the unyielding determination of federal, state and local agencies, the Berks County Coroner’s Office has confirmed the identity of this individual.”
Investigators are now working to learn more about Grubb’s life in the years before his death. Authorities have made contact with his family and learned that he once served in the Pennsylvania National Guard in the early 1970s. The coroner’s office plans to transfer Grubb’s remains to his family to be buried at a place of their choosing.
Although Grubb’s cause of death was deemed to be suicide, investigators now hope to determine how the drugs got into his system before he died on the Appalachian Trail. The investigation will remain open until a final determination is made.
Shore Animal Control was called to pick up a seagull on the Jersey Shore that was reportedly injured by a “kid throwing a baseball at it” in front of the ICONA hotel in Avalon, the Upper Township-based company said Sunday.
The bird had a broken wing, according to the Facebook post, and authorities are searching for witnesses.
Shore Animal Control also posted a screenshot of an alleged text message in which a person claims a boy lured the seagull with food and then “purposely” threw a baseball at its wing two times.
The animal services company said Avalon police “will not investigate” unless a witness comes forward. Anyone with information can call Shore Animal Control at 1-800-351-1822 and Avalon police at 609-967-3411.
Several seagull species are native to New Jersey. They are not considered endangered in the state, but they are federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, making it illegal to harm them. This hasn’t stopped violence against the birds in recent years.
In July, Franklin Ziegler, of Cape May, allegedly killed a seagull in North Wildwood by decapitating it, authorities said. Ziegler, 29, was charged with animal cruelty. In 2017, Philadelphia firefighter Edward Frost, allegedly killed a seagull on the Sea Isle City beach by throwing an object at it. He faced disorderly persons charges, and eventually pled guilty and had to pay a $250 fine. Also during the summer of 2017, a man in Ocean City allegedly caused a seagull’s death by striking it with a beach umbrella pole. The scene was caught on video, but it’s unclear whether authorities ever caught the man.
They say they got sick from doing their job, and now they’re being denied worker’s comp benefits Or, it turns out, they’re employers may not even have proper coverage.
The NBC4 I-Team and Telemundo 52 Investiga have been looking into the increasing number of silicosis cases in California. Silicosis is a lung disease affecting stone-cutting workers working with engineered or artificial stone.
Cesar Gonzalez says he felt like the floor was being pulled from under him last December when he was diagnosed with silicosis.
“To be honest, I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry,” he said.
According to doctors, silicosis is caused by inhaling silica dust from working with artificial stone used in kitchen and bathroom countertops.
“You feel like you’re trapped in your own body,” Gonzalez said of his condition.
Cesar says he started working at a shop cutting engineered stone when he was 18. At 36, he is now connected to an oxygen tank and waiting for a lung transplant, while also trying to get worker’s compensation from his employer.
But when he tried to contact his employer, he said neither he nor his attorney could get an answer about coverage.
“We believe that there is no worker’s compensation insurance coverage, and as such, we will probably have to join a state agency to cover worker’s compensation benefits,” Gary Rodich, of Rodich Law, said.
Worker’s compensation insurance covers employee expenses resulting from accidents and illnesses caused in their places of employment. But Rodich has discovered some employers in the stone-cutting industry aren’t keeping up with their coverage, which he says is illegal. And, in other cases, the silicosis diagnosis is denied from coverage.
“We’ve got several of these cases, almost all of them have been denied by the worker’s compensation insurance carrier,” Rodich added.
These types of cases have now gotten the attention of California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara.
“So we first noticed that there was some delays in granting worker’s comp rights to some of the silicosis patients through your reporting, actually,” Lara said.
Lara tells us our reporting prompted him to write a letter to the Worker’s Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau requesting a detailed study on silicosis claims across the state.
He wants answers to questions like the number of silicosis cases filed in the past 10 years and the average medical costs related to these claims. He says all employers in the state must offer some form of worker’s compensation coverage.
“Worker’s comp in California is critical to protect our workers. Everybody can access worker’s comp. Even our undocumented community is something we’re very proud of because we know that we keep all our workers healthy, it contributes to their own economic wellbeing, but it contributes to the overall wellbeing of our economy here in California,” Lara said.
The NBC4 I-Team reached out to Cesar’s most recent employer in North Hollywood, listed on a legal claim provided to us by his attorney, requesting information about worker’s compensation coverage. Despite several attempts, neither our partners at Telemundo 52 Investiga or the I-Team received a response.
Rodich says he wants more to be done on the state level – beyond the proposed study.
We have been tracking cases of silicosis related to engineered stone in California and more continue to be identified. As of Aug. 15, the state’s department of public health tells the I-Team there are 176 of these types of cases in the state. Sixty percent are Los Angeles County residents, according to our analysis of the data.
One person is dead and another person is injured after a car crashed into a Philadelphia Fire Department ladder truck in North Philadelphia on Saturday, police say.
The crash happened around 12:10 p.m. at the intersection of West Lehigh and West Sedgley avenues, NBC10 reported. The firetruck was traveling westbound along West Lehigh Avenue on the way to an assignment, when a car traveling north on West Sedgley Avenue allegedly cut in front of the truck, causing the two vehicles to crash, authorities say.
The car then struck an unoccupied parked car, 6ABC reported. A 23-year-old passenger in the car was taken to the hospital, where she died just before 1 p.m., police say.
The driver of the car, a man in his late twenties, was taken to the hospital where he is in critical condition, officials say.
The crash is under investigation by Philadelphia police’s Crash Investigation Division. The victim’s identity has not yet been revealed, and there is no word on whether charges will be filed in the case.
A woman was killed in a house fire in Harrowgate that injured two others and displaced 13 people Friday morning.
The fire began in a rowhouse on the 1800 block of East Russell Street around 4:30 a.m. and spread to four other homes. Police said the blaze is being investigated as an arson and a male suspect is in custody.
Firefighters rescued residents who had evacuated to rooftops. Responders found the woman who died on the second floor of the home where the fire began. Her name and aged have not been released.
Medics treated two people for non-life-threatening injuries. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army are supporting the people displaced by the fire, NBC10 reported.
Philadelphia Assistant Fire Chief Charles Walker told NBC10 that firefighters are unsure how many people lived in the home that initially caught fire, and they did not find any working smoke detectors in the home.
Police in Belmar, New Jersey, arrested a surfer on Tuesday for charges of disorderly conduct stemming from an incident where he allegedly did not have a beach tag.
A two-minute video circulating on social media shows 28-year-old Liam Mahoney, a surfer visiting from Junction City, California, confronted by police before they tackle him to the ground.
Mahoney, wearing a wetsuit, was seen being physically held by officers. He and a woman are arguing with police, saying that he had a beach badge, or beach tag, on his bag. A beach badge is required for accessing Belmar beaches from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays.
Less than a minute into the video, the two officers holding Mahoney become aggressive, with one putting his arm around Mahoney’s neck in a chokehold. They then tackle him to the ground.
Additional bystanders gathered around the scene, verbally accosting the officers and shouting at them to get off of Mahoney.
“They don’t know what the **** they’re doing,” one bystander is heard saying in the video.
“I have a ****ing badge,” Mahoney shouts at the police while he is on the ground.
Belmar Police said on Facebook that Mahoney was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstruction of justice, along with being issued a borough ordinance for requiring a beach badge.
“A thorough review of the circumstances of the arrest will be conducted, in accordance with applicable New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (OAG) guidelines,” the statement from Belmar Police read.
In the comments of the Facebook post, reactions were largely negative, accusing police of excessive force while calling for deescalation training and accountability against the police officers involved.
Kamala Harris’ past relationship with Willie Brown is back under scrutiny as she prepares to be named the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.
Aug. 14 2024, Published 1:45 p.m. ET
Kamala Harris’ phenomenal career has been overshadowed for years by gossip she owes her rise to the top to the political powerbroker she dated in the 1990s.
RadarOnline.com can now reveal the secrets of the U.S. president wannabe’s romance with “kingmaker” Willie Brown – including how he gifted her a BMW when she was already in a $100,000-a-year job he arranged for her, as well as the Democrat’s use of his massive network of rich and powerful contacts.
Peter Schweizer forensically detailed Harris and Brown’s relationship in his
He says: “Kamala Harris’ entrée into the corridors of political power largely began with a date.
“In 1994, she met Willie Brown, who at the time was the second-most-powerful man in California politics.
“As Speaker of the State Assembly, Brown was a legend in Sacramento and around the state. He represented a district in the Bay Area and was well known in San Francisco social circles.
“In addition to running the California Assembly, Brown ran a legal practice on the side, which meant taking fees from lobbyists and industries that may have wanted favorable treatment in Sacramento.”
The writer adds by the time Harris, 59, met Brown – now 90 – he was renowned for his penchant for “expensive Brioni suits, Borsalino hats, Ferraris and Porsches” – and once declared his “body would reject a Plymouth”.
Brown retired from political office in 2004 and bought a $1.8million condo in the St. Regis in San Francisco two years later.
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Powerplayer Brown served as mayor of San Francisco from 1996 to 2004.
Harris was 29 and an up-and-coming lawyer when she caught his eye – with Brown then a 60-year-old influential figure in California politics.
Their relationship lasted less than two years when Brown was separated from his wife at the time – and his influence over her career has led critics to say he is the “sugar daddy” to whom she owes her current spot as frontrunner to succeed Joe Biden, 81, in the 2024 race for the White House.
Brown was also two years older than Harris’ father when they started dating.
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Schweizer added: “Their affair was the talk of San Francisco in 1994… Brown began pulling levers for Harris that both boosted her career and put money in her pocket, rewarding Kamala with appointments to state commissions that paid handsomely and did not require confirmation by the legislature.”
The writer details how Brown put Harris on the State Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later the California Medical Assistance Commission.
Both posts were part-time and, at the time, Schweizer says she was “making around $100,000”.
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Harris became the Democratic Party’s unofficial presidential nominee after Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month.
He added: “Along the way, Brown also bought young Kamala a new BMW.”
But the writer says: “Perhaps the most important thing Brown gave Harris was access to his vast network of political supporters, donors, and sponsors.
“Soon she was publicly arm in arm with Brown in the most elite circles of San Francisco, including lavish parties and celebrity galas.”
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By 1995, Brown was running for mayor of San Francisco and Harris was regularly by his side.
On his mayoral election night, she was at the front of a crowd of Brown’s adoring followers to mark his moment of glory – and handed him a blue baseball cap emblazoned with the moniker ‘Da Mayor’.
It was shortly after Brown’s mayoral victory that he and Harris split up – with most saying the break-up was his decision.
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Schweizer wrote about Harris’ rise to power: “Soon she was publicly arm in arm with Brown in the most elite circles of San Francisco, including lavish parties and celebrity galas.”
But even though the romance with Brown was over, Harris remained close to him as she chased her political ambitions.
Schweizer says: “As mayor, Brown would prove to be enormously helpful in her rise to political power.
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“Willie Brown possessed the most powerful political machine in Northern California. As mayor, he leveraged that power to enrich his friends and allies.
“During his tenure, Brown came under FBI investigation twice for corruption involving lucrative contracts flowing from the city to his political friends.
“His operation was soon dubbed ‘Willie Brown Inc’.”
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Harris started dating Montel Williams after she and Brown split in 1995.
It was around three years after Brown’s election that Harris got her biggest break – San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan hired her to head up his office’s Career Criminal Unit.
Schweizer says in his book Hallinan insisted Harris’ close bond with Brown had “nothing to do with the hiring”.
But when the number two slot in the prosecutor’s office opened up and Harris was passed over for the promotion by Hallinan, the writer said “Brown seemed furious”.
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Kamala Harris
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He added: “The mayor was publicly attacking Hallinan for failing to do his job.”
An insider also told the writer: “This whole thing (was) about Kamala Harris.
“Cross one of Willie’s friends and there will be hell to pay.’”
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Schweizer said: “As mayor, Brown would prove to be enormously helpful in Harris’ rise to political power.”
Harris quickly quit the district attorney’s office and went to work at the city attorney’s – run by a close Brown ally.
Schweizer added the “Brown machine” soon cranked up again to help Harris run against Hallinan.
By 2003, she announced her decision to challenge her ex-boss for his position as San Francisco DA – and, as the writer puts it, she had plenty of help from the “Willie Brown Machine” as it “ran so much of San Francisco”.
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Rebecca Prozan, a former Brown aide, was recruited as Harris’ campaign manager to give her a boost, and her finance chair during her run for Hallinan’s job was Mark Bell – a major Democratic Party fund-raiser.
Armed with a letter from Brown, a political consultant named Philip Muller also established an independent expenditure committee called the California Voter Project, Schweizer reveals.
He had worked on both of Brown’s mayoral races and the flow of money directly into her campaign with the Brown-linked support network was “unlike anything the district attorney’s race had ever seen”, says Schweizer.
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Harris was elected San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003 supported by a team of Brown-linked backers.
Much of the cash sluiced in from the “super-wealthy of San Francisco who were close to Brown” according to the writer – and the mayor himself gave the maximum contribution of $500 and wrote a letter telling the city’s elite to cough up the same.
Schweizer stated: “The San Francisco elite embraced her, which meant all-white fund-raisers in Pacific Heights.
“Friends and alliances with the San Francisco elite she had formed while dating Willie Brown also came to her aid.”
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The Getty clan were said to be among the army of supporters “strongly” behind Harris.
She has denied there was a drive by Brown to help her career – but the San Francisco Chronicle noted about her Hallinan campaign “a large number of her contributors also have been donors to Harris’ one-time boyfriend and political sponsor, Mayor Willie Brown”.
But the ongoing outrage over the failure – also revealed by RadarOnline.com – has done nothing to stop her rise to the top, and she is now the betting favorite to beat former president Donald Trump, 78, to win the White House in less than 90 days.
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Harris is now favorite to defeat Donald Trump in the November 5 presidential election.
Harris’ supporters have branded talk Brown was her passport to power – but critics say his fingerprints are all over her career.
Schweizer is far from the only journalist and writer to detail proof of his backing.
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Reporter Dean Morain said in his book Kamala’s Way: An American Life: “Over the course of the relationship, Brown gave Harris a BMW, she traveled with him to Paris and attended the Academy Awards.”
He also said in the 2021 tome Brown took her on a business trip to Boston where he was meeting Donald Trump.
Harris and Brown’s relationship was also well-known fodder for the San Francisco gossip pages, with the city’s Chronicle describing her as the powerbroker’s “new steady” – while the Los Angeles Times more diplomatically referred to Harris as Brown’s “frequent companion”.
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Source: Simon & Schuster
Dean Morain said in his book Kamala’s Way: An American Life: “Over the course of the relationship, Brown gave Harris a BMW, she traveled with him to Paris and attended the Academy Awards.”
After being elected as San Francisco’s top cop in 2003 over Hallinan, she was seven years later elected state attorney general.
Harris got re-elected to the post in 2014, before she went on to become a senator – a huge achievement for the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants who grew up in a broken home with her younger sister, Maya.
Brown has not been silent in the face of critics who say he is the secret to her success.
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He spoke out in July to pay tribute to his former lover – declaring she pulled herself up by her own bootstraps.
Brown insisted: “I think talent is what got her where she is. And she has been through the chairs – district attorney, attorney-general, US senator and now vice-president.
“That’s an indication that she had to be talented.”
