Jonathan D. Silver stories

Allegheny County Police homicide detectives Friday were investigating the death of a man overnight while in Pittsburgh police custody. The man, identified as 29-year-old James Richard Brown Jr. by the Medical Examiner’s Office, was behaving erratically and trying to get into a city police vehicle and was “taken to the...

A federal grand jury has indicted a Butler County man already in custody on charges of threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump and other federal officials. Shawn Monper, 32, of Butler Township was arrested last month and accused of posting threats to YouTube under the name “Mr Satan” between Jan....

Former President Donald Trump will hold a rally Saturday in Westmoreland County. Trump, the GOP nominee for president, is scheduled to appear at 6 p.m. at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Unity. Trump’s visit will come two weeks after he last appeared in the region. On Oct. 5, Trump returned...

U.S. Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, plans to hold a rally Wednesday afternoon in Erie. The visit by the Ohio politician, announced Monday, will take place two days before former President Donald Trump, the GOP’s nominee for president, will appear in Johnstown. At the Erie event, Vance...

One person was killed Wednesday morning in a head-on crash in Leetsdale. The collision between an SUV and a pickup happened around 8:06 a.m. at Ohio River Boulevard and Ferry Street. The man driving the SUV was pronounced dead at the hospital, according to Allegheny County Police, who are investigating....

On Tuesday, two days before a giveaway of Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads, the Pittsburgh Penguins learned that the toys had been stolen, plunging the front office into a whirlwind of activity. The 18,500 tiny likenesses of No. 68, complete with hand raised in a salute, had disappeared after being shipped by...

A jury Monday convicted a Garfield man of second-degree murder in the 2021 shooting of a college student working a summer job at a U-Haul rental center. Braijon Burton, 24, will be sentenced May 6 in the killing of Jacob Jaillet. Second-degree murder, which is a killing carried out during...

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. was sworn in Thursday to his seventh term in office. It was a notable achievement for Zappala, the Democrat who won only by running on the Republican ticket after he lost both the endorsement by his party and the primary. Pennsylvania Supreme...

The Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday released a player from their practice squad several hours after police charged him with assaulting his girlfriend. Pittsburgh police said Tariq M. Carpenter, 24, threw his live-in girlfriend to the ground and held her down against her will during an argument around 8 a.m. in...

Police in Washington County are investigating the death Saturday of a 69-year-old man who authorities said collapsed shortly after being hit with pepper spray during a dispute. Harry Doleno of Canonsburg was sprayed around 12:40 p.m. on Seward Drive in Union Township, according to the county coroner. The assailant was...

Allegheny County sheriff’s deputies confiscated drugs, money and a stolen gun during a traffic stop Saturday afternoon on Pittsburgh’s South Side. They arrested Glen Cleveland, 22, of Carrick after witnessing a suspected drug deal shortly before 1 p.m. at a gas station at East Carson and 10th streets. Cleveland drove...

Pittsburgh police are investigating the death Saturday of a newborn. First responders were dispatched Friday around 11:36 p.m. to the boy’s home in the 600 block of Mt. Pleasant Road in the Northview Heights neighborhood for a report of an infant in distress. The 5-day-old baby, Jah’Shawn O. Martin, was...

The 911 call Friday from a Springdale Township home was chilling: A woman named Judy described how her husband had shot her in the stomach then put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger, according to court papers. “My husband just shot me,” Judy told the operator. “He’s...

A morning melee Wednesday at the Greyhound station in Downtown Pittsburgh that ended with a shooting by law enforcement officers was triggered by a dispute between bus passengers over one taking pictures of the other’s family, according to court paperwork. Pittsburgh police on Friday charged Rayshon Mason, 32, of New...

A second lawsuit was filed Thursday against a Lower Burrell nursing home over the death of a resident injected with a lethal dose of insulin, one of numerous victims whom authorities said were targeted by a rogue nurse during a yearslong killing spree. The 15-count lawsuit against Belair Healthcare and...

Mildred Miller Posvar, a Rust Belt singing sensation who soared to stardom on some of the world’s biggest opera stages before finally alighting in Pittsburgh, where she coached voice for decades, founded an opera company and became an indefatigable booster of the arts and the University of Pittsburgh, died Wednesday....

Lawyers for the City of Pittsburgh and a bus driver hurt in the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse sparred Thursday in court over access to engineering records. Peter Giglione, attorney for Pittsburgh Regional Transit driver Daryl Luciani, wants to subpoena records about the bridge from three engineering firms, but the city...

Victims of the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse are fighting for records that might shed more light on what the City of Pittsburgh knew about the crumbling span before disaster struck. But in the face of potential liability, the city is vigorously trying to block those efforts in court, claiming that...

For the first time since 1960, the Carnegie Museum of Art will be absent its million-dollar Egon Schiele drawing, “Portrait of a Man.” The museum Wednesday renounced its claim to the 1917 artwork, ending a criminal probe into whether the piece was stolen property and capping a long legal battle...

For a place that covers less than half a square mile, Aspinwall is jam-packed with history. On Sunday afternoon, Terry Nelson Taylor, the community’s resident historian, compressed more than a century of Aspinwall’s stories into a two-hour paid walking tour through the leafy borough. After meeting on Brilliant Avenue in...

A woman charged with killing two nursing home patients in Butler County by overdosing them with insulin faces new allegations that she caused a third such death at a Lower Burrell health care facility where she was a supervisor. The claims are part of a wrongful death lawsuit filed Tuesday...

Decade after decade, a modest 1917 drawing by Egon Schiele, one of Austria’s most famous artists, graced the collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art, occasionally being displayed with little fanfare. That changed this month when the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office executed a search warrant on the Oakland museum and...

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s brilliant mind belonged to the atom, his loyalty to the United States, his passion to the New Mexico desert. But the beating heart of the American Prometheus belonged to a woman who grew up in Aspinwall. Yes, Aspinwall, childhood home of the great physicist’s wife, Katherine “Kitty”...

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s brilliant mind belonged to the atom, his loyalty to the United States, his passion to the New Mexico desert. But the beating heart of the American Prometheus belonged to a woman who grew up in Aspinwall. Yes, Aspinwall, childhood home of the great physicist’s wife, Katherine “Kitty”...