Justin Vellucci stories, Page 4

An interior designer accused of swindling a Fox Chapel woman out of $170,000 is headed to court, the latest in a flurry of legal cases surrounding the embattled Pittsburgh business owner. Lauren Michelle Piasecki, 44, of Pittsburgh’s Stanton Heights neighborhood waived her preliminary hearing Wednesday in a Sharpsburg district court....

A North Side school was locked down briefly Tuesday morning after at least 11 shots were fired outside school grounds, authorities said. Perry Traditional Academy, a high school in the Pittsburgh’s Perry North neighborhood, was in “secure status” at about 10 a.m., two hours after a juvenile boy was targeted...

A man remained in jail Tuesday on charges that he forced his way into a 93-year-old woman’s North Side home over the weekend and raped her. Authorities said Ronny Hough, 39, followed the woman on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus from Downtown to the city’s Troy Hill neighborhood about 6...

State authorities have accused four Allegheny County residents of breaking into dozens of vehicles last year throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania, stealing checkbooks, credit, debit and ID cards, and then draining victims’ bank accounts. On Dec. 6, the state Attorney General’s Office charged Ahmed Henderson, Theresa Imel, Elizabeth Madden and Shaquan Moore...

Police have sacked a Pittsburgh man they say netted more than $1,000 Sunday by getting Pittsburgh Steelers fans to pay to park at a North Side lot he doesn’t own. Alphonso Rattliff, 30, on Sunday charged 23 drivers headed to see the Steelers play at Acrisure Stadium $50 apiece to...

Allegheny County Police on Thursday removed all passengers from a Spirit jetliner at Pittsburgh International Airport after one traveler “misinterpreted” another’s text message as being about “a possible bomb threat,” the Transportation Security Administration told TribLive. There was no bomb threat, according to TSA and county police. TSA officials and...

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala, Jr. is suing the county pension board and has asked a judge to force county officials to adequately fund a retirement system slated to run out of money in 15 years. In the 43-page lawsuit, filed in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court’s civil...

A McKeesport teen awaiting trial for homicide orchestrated a hit on a police informant from an Allegheny County Jail cell, using code words like “lottery numbers” and “taco shells” to instruct another teen to carry out the crime, police said Wednesday. Allegheny County Police have charged both teens — Daemond...

A task force led by a Republican congressman from Southwestern Pennsylvania on Tuesday capped a monthslong investigation of the attempted assassination of President-elect Donald Trump at a Butler County campaign rally in July by releasing dozens of recommendations to improve the U.S. Secret Service after widespread criticism of the agency....

Nearly a year has passed since an explosion leveled a caretaker’s house on John Tippins’ sprawling Sewickley Heights property. But, as the managing director of a Downtown-based private equity group gets ready to rebuild on the Backbone Road site, at least one neighbor still is wondering what happened to the...

A 24-year-old former U.S. soldier living in a Pittsburgh suburb has been charged in federal court with lying to the FBI after, authorities said, he flew to the Middle East and attempted to join the terrorist group Hezbollah. Jack Danaher Molloy, 24, of Upper St. Clair traveled to Lebanon in...

A McKees Rocks woman who was one of four people shot Oct. 26 in the borough died Sunday, marking the incident’s second fatality. Dominique Smith, 38, was pronounced dead about 11:05 a.m. in an area hospital, the Allegheny County Medical Examiners’ Office said. Smith was shot near Meyers Street and...

Coal mining’s roots in the Pittsburgh area run deeper than the foundations of American democracy. Since the mid-1700s, years before the Declaration of Independence, Pennsylvanians have mined 250,000 acres of land for coal, pulling more than 15 billion tons of the fossil fuel from the earth, according to the state...

On the night of Oct. 3, Brentwood police pulled over a car on Route 51 because the license plate was partially blocked. When an officer approached the driver, her friend and front-seat passenger, Devin Irwin, held up his iPhone and began recording. The only other person in the car, a...

Pittsburgh police have found the driver of a vehicle believed to have struck and killed a woman early Thursday in a hit-and-run crash in Oakland. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the victim as Jessie Maroney, 37, of South Park. Police said Maroney was crossing Darragh Street in a...

A judge Thursday sentenced a Pittsburgh man to 20 to 40 years in prison for killing an off-duty Oakdale police officer during a road-rage incident. Kevin McSwiggen, 42, of the city’s Greenfield neighborhood was convicted in July by a jury of third-degree murder in the July 3, 2022, shooting death...

A federal grand jury has indicted a Pittsburgh man on charges of attempted murder and assaulting a federal officer nearly four months after authorities say he fired at least 18 shots at a Drug Enforcement Administration agent who later found a large stash of fentanyl at the man’s home. Drew...

Aiden Saber cried Monday in a Pittsburgh courtroom as he apologized for killing two teenage passengers and ruining the lives of their families last December when he crashed his SUV into a tree. “I stand before you today fully aware of my actions and the irreversible pain I have caused,”...

Twice a week, Ellie Tourney eats lunch on a stone bench near her son’s grave. She doesn’t want her youngest boy to feel like he has been forgotten. Nearly a year has passed since Jonathan Tourney and Taylor Orlowski were killed on Christmas weekend when the speeding SUV they were...

A Braddock man was killed early Friday and the suspect who shot him remains at large, authorities says. State police found Henry Freeman, 52, dead inside his vehicle on the 400 block of Library Street in Braddock about 1:45 a.m., state police said. He had been shot several times. Freeman...

A teenager late Thursday accidentally shot his younger brother in the leg while showing off a gun to friends in their Port Vue home, authorities say. Allegheny County Police charged Jahwon Glenn, who turned 16 Wednesday, with aggravated assault. He is being prosecuted as an adult. Glenn was arraigned around...

Details can get complicated when you’re serving 600 Thanksgiving meals. The ingredients alone are daunting: 30 large turkeys, dozens of 1-gallon cans of yams, 36 bags of stuffing mix, 50 pounds of butter. About 20 volunteers Thursday formed production lines inside Bethel United Methodist Church kitchen in Lower Burrell to...

Peter Theofilis stalked the sidelines of a touch- football game Thursday and watched a new generation of family and community embrace a Thanksgiving tradition. The inspiration for 12 Pittsburgh-area cousins to stage the first “turkey bowl” game sprouted out of services at a Greek Orthodox church in Oakmont. On Thursday,...

Kelly Shilala weighed truffles on a scale Saturday afternoon. Bill Hickey sliced fudge. But one of the biggest stars of Oakmont’s Big Hometown Christmas & Parade, which drew hundreds of visitors who packed Allegheny River Boulevard, was clearly Julie Hwostow. Hwostow drew smiles from visitors young and old as she...