Teghan Simonton stories, Page 29

Forty families in Vandergrift will have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner this week thanks to the town’s Community Watch and donations from community establishments. The Vandergrift Community Watch organized Thanksgiving packages for the families, complete with turkeys, potatoes, vegetables and more. In the four years his group has been putting on...

Emergency responders were called to St. Michael’s Cemetery near Pittsburgh’s South Side Slopes neighborhood around 1 p.m. Tuesday after a man was pinned beneath a tombstone. The 47-year-old man was visiting the cemetery with his mother when he lost his balance and grabbed onto the tombstone, said Cara Cruz, a...

Craft beer enthusiasts can drink their way to a free koozie while exploring Allegheny County’s 34 breweries. A new collaboration between VisitPittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Brewers Guild will offer the free koozie (the insulating covers for a can) to anyone who collects five stamps for buying five beers from guild...

Pittsburgh police are investigating a robbery that occurred Monday evening in the 100 block of South 19th Street in Pittsburgh’s South Side. Two men were walking down the street around 11 p.m. when they were approached by a third man asking for directions, according to Cara Cruz, a police spokeswoman....

The Shaler Street Bridge over Route 19 in Pittsburgh’s West End will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, PennDOT announced Monday. Swank Construction Company LLC will do road maintenance from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days, causing the bridge to close. Traffic will be detoured through Grandview Avenue. After the...

Vandergrift has launched a new series of night markets and invites local vendors to sell handcrafted goods and connect with the community. The first Holiday Night Market took place Thursday in the town’s former J.C. Penney building on Grant Avenue. The event was sponsored by the Vandergrift Improvement Program, a...

Police officers from Washington Township served lunch Wednesday to students at Kiski Area Upper Elementary School. Officers lined up behind the cafeteria counters and served pizza and sandwiches to fifth- and sixth-graders. The event isn’t new. Officers usually serve lunch at the school once a year. But this was the...

Plan to spend about $40,000 on Christmas gifts this year if you’re using the 12 Days of Christmas as your shopping list. This year, PNC is reporting a total cost of $38,993.59 to buy all 12 gifts — including five golden rings, a bunch of drummers drumming and a lot...

Pittsburgh got a perfect score on the annual Municipality Equality Index Scorecard (MEI) on Tuesday, a report from the Human Rights Campaign that rates cities on their inclusivity of LGBTQ communities. The report bases scores on the existence of LGBTQ protections by city government, including non-discrimination laws, services and programs,...

Mezzo-soprano Marianne Cornetti began singing at local churches, including Brackenridge’s Trinity United Methodist, as a teenager before making her professional debut with the Pittsburgh Opera and singing professionally for three decades. On Sunday, she returned to Trinity United Methodist to hold a concert to raise money for the Allegheny Valley...

Social studies teachers in Kiski Area School District no longer rely solely upon textbooks and newspaper articles to talk about current events. Now they can tell students to pull up CNN on their Chromebooks. Dave Williamson, chairman of the district’s social studies department, said that’s been one benefit of becoming...

Traffic has resumed on Route 28 southbound, after a crash caused a standstill Friday morning. PennDot confirmed on Twitter that the incident had cleared. There were still residual delays. All lanes of traffic on Route 28 southbound were stopped around 8 a.m., after a crash involving five vehicles, state police...

A West Virginia woman was stopped at a Pittsburgh International Airport security checkpoint Wednesday after the Transportation Security Administration discovered a loaded .380-caliber handgun in her carry-on. The gun was loaded with seven bullets, including one in the chamber, according to TSA. This was the 33rd firearm detected at Pittsburgh...

Two Alle-Kiski Valley communities rescheduled municipal meetings that had been scheduled for Tuesday. Hyde Park Council moved its meeting because several council members were sick. The meeting was rescheduled for 6:30 p.m. Nov. 19. Allegheny Township Supervisors postponed their meeting because it didn’t have a quorum or a majority of...

Retired Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Dawn Serakowski thought her daughter was in class. Instead, Kamdyn Serakowski, a senior at Kiski Area High School, surprised her mother Tuesday when she took the podium at Kiski Area Upper Elementary School to deliver the keynote speech for the school’s 16th annual Veterans...

The Allegheny Valley Marine Corps League Detachment 827 received a donation of three uniforms from three generations of a Frazer family, just in time for Veterans Day and the 244th anniversary of the Marine Corps. Gail Callender, 68, gave his grandfather’s uniform from World War I, his father’s from World...

One candidate claimed victory for two different seats on the Tarentum Council on Tuesday. Carrie Fox was elected to be council member at-large and also to represent the 3rd Ward. Fox, a Democrat, defeated Republican Tiffany Babinsack for the member at-large position, taking 60.4% of the vote to Babinsack’s 38.1%,...

Two newcomers will join Vandergrift Council, and incumbent Kathy Chvala will return for another term, according to unofficial Westmoreland County election results. Five candidates ran for three open council seats. John Uskuraitis, who cross-filed as both Democrat and Republican, got the most support, collecting 27.4% of the vote. Republican Karen...

An incumbent won his fourth term on the New Kensington-Arnold School Board in Tuesday’s election, and four members of a group that banded together to bring change to the board also claimed victories, according to unofficial results. Cross-filed challenger Terry Schrock collected 39.9% of the votes cast and incumbent Eric...

A cross-filed incumbent and Republican challenger were the top two vote-getters Tuesday in a race for Lower Burrell Council, leaving the city’s former longtime solicitor as the odd candidate out, according to unofficial election results. Chris Fabry, the incumbent, was the top vote-getter with 41.7% of the votes cast, while...

Most counties in the area are predicting low voter turnout ahead of Tuesday’s election — typical for an election year with no presidential or congressional races. Only about a fourth of registered voters are expected to cast ballots in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties and a little more than a third...

Rosebud Mining Co., a coal mining company based in Kittanning, recently purchased the building formerly operated by Pittsburgh Glass Works, according Allegheny County real estate records. The building, at 150 Ferry St. in the Creighton section of East Deer, has been vacant since last year. Pittsburgh Glass Works was once...

Shaler police have identified the man rescued after the car he was driving went off the road and ended up in Pine Creek. Paul Skerl, 76, was driving on Elfinwild Road in Shaler on Thursday afternoon when his vehicle left the roadway, fell down a steep hill and landed upside...

Marcy Burns said she felt relieved last Friday after learning that Canadian authorities had discovered her husband’s body in Lake Erie. “Closure,” said Marcy Burns of Plum, whose husband had been missing since Aug. 17. Raymond Burns, 58, had been fishing on Lake Erie when his 21-foot recreational fishing boat...

No one was injured in a two-car crash Thursday morning in Harmar that left a car’s rear end propped on the side of another car and its front end smashed against a utility pole. The crash happened at Hite and Russellton roads around 8 a.m., Harmar police Chief Jason Domaratz...