Police announced the arrest Thursday the man who they say was behind the wheel of a speeding SUV when it struck and killed a woman in the Kingsessing section of Philadelphia Monday night.

Deanna Teal, 52, was hit by a gray Chevy Tahoe with New York tags around 10:20 p.m. Monday at the intersection of 49th Street and Chester Avenue, according to police.

• WARNING: This raw video of the deadly hit-and-run could be disturbing to some viewers.

The moment was caught on camera by surveillance video from a nearby grocery store. In the video you can see Teal walking home -- crossing the intersection -- when the SUV quickly crosses the screen, hitting Teal.

Jerome Brooks, 45, of Elmira, N.Y. was arraigned Thursday on murder, homicide by vehicle, DUI and related charges, according to court documents.

Police say Brooks never slowed down or stopped after the crash. Police found his heavily damaged Chevy Tahoe abandoned about six blocks away from the scene behind a property on the 4700 block of Larchwood Avenue.

A witness told NBC10 that SUV came careening across the Chester Avenue Bridge, bottomed out and lost control nearly striking the witness before hitting Teal.

Police declared Teal dead on the scene.

"She was a sweet girl, she didn't deserve that," said Teal's friend Loretta Casey.

Teal, who was set to be married, left behind a daughter, six grandchildren. Her fiancée James McClellan hopes justice is served for the driver who killed Teal.

"He should of just stopped," McClellan said. "He'll get his... I'll leave it up to the courts."

One man died and another was injured after falling into a water tower in Lower Providence Township Wednesday.

Officials confirmed that Jason Schmidt, 31, of Jacobus, fell to his death. After several hours, his body was removed by the Montgomery County Coroner's Office.

Another worker, Miguel Martinez, 38, of Pennsgrove, N.J. was injured in the accident. He was suspended in mid-air in his safety harness, dangling 40 to 60 feet above. It took rescue workers around three hours to free him.

"The victim was suspended in his work harness which required us to enter into the tank and extricate him," said Chief Bryan McFarland of the Lower Providence Fire Department.

He was home from the hospital Thursday afternoon, according to authorities.

Officials say Schmidt, Martinez and another subcontractor with Corosion Control out of Pendricktown, N.J. were working on the water tower on 40 Featherbed Lane when they fell into the tank. The tower is on the property of the Audobon Water Company, according to Lower Providence Township.

McFarland tells NBC10 that Martinez was able to speak as firefighters worked.

“We had to monitor the atmosphere because we weren’t going to send rescuers into an atmosphere that doesn’t support life,” said McFarland. “We were monitoring from the bottom and from the top side with atmospheric measuring equipment.”

McFarland also says the emergency call initially stated industrial equipment had malfunctioned. 

A female bandit is arrested after police say she went on a one-woman crime spree in Washington Township.

Ashley Willis, 27, was busted Wednesday night after a holdup at Wendy's on Route 42. Restaurant workers called police after being robbed by a young woman with a gun. Workers say she took off running after getting her hands on the money.

Officers chased Willis into a nearby wooded area, where they arrested her. The gun she was carrying was not loaded with bullets, according to police.

Investigators say Willis preyed on an unsuspecting shopper during an armed robbery last week, outside a Kohl's Store along Route 42. The victim described her as a young woman with blonde hair.

That also matches the description given by the victim of a late night carjacking last Friday in a McDonald's parking lot, located along the same stretch of road as the other two crimes. Police are working to connect her to this incident as well.

Willis is charged with two armed robberies. They believe the crime spree may have been fueled by a drug habit.
 

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide what it wants to do with a stack of cases filling its in-box on the subject of same-sex marriage as soon as Friday. Just don't expect a final up-or-down vote on the issue anytime soon.

The Supreme Court is in the process of deciding what cases it will rule on in the next year. Ten same-sex marriage cases are possibilities, including a challenge to California's ban on gay marriage and a number of disputes over the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

The issue has become politically and socially fraught, and the court doesn't appear to be taking this decision lightly. It has deferred its announcement in recent days, but it can’t put it off much longer, experts said.

“It’s hard to look the other way,” University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone said.

The cases land in front of the Supreme Court as Americans seem to be growing slowly more accepting of same-sex marriage. A variety of public opinion polls taken over the last decade illustrate that shift.

During that time, the number of states where gay marriage is legal has grown to nine (in addition to the District of Columbia), the most recent burst coming on Election Day this year, when voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington endorsed it. Five more states allow civil unions, a legal step short of marriage. Three states -- including California -- permit domestic partnerships. The rest of the country bans gay marriage.

In May, President Barack Obama said his feelings on the issue had evolved to the point that he was comfortable with same-sex marriage.

Maryland and Washington began issuing marriage licenses on Thursday.

“That these issues exist at all is because public attitudes about homosexuality have changed dramatically,” said Stone, a constitutional scholar and author. “Attitudes have evolved about the meaning of equality over time, just as they did with separate but equal (the invalidated legal doctrine that justified racial segregation) and with women.”

The court has a range of choices, from sidestepping the issue entirely by choosing not to hear any of the cases to tackling the heart of the issue: whether same-sex marriage should be legal under the constitution.

But legal experts expect the court to land somewhere in the middle. The Supreme Court typically does not run ahead of changes in social norms, legal experts say. That is why it is expected to take up the issue in a way that avoids making too broad an impact.

The court could announce which gay marriage cases -- if any -- it will hear during the upcoming term on Friday.

There are two types of cases that the high court is considering. Most are related to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. That legislation prohibits same-sex couples in states that have legalized gay marriage from an array of federal benefits, including tax deductions, Social Security survivor benefits and federal employee health insurance.

Across the country, challenges have arisen from people who have been denied assistance that they would have had access to if they were in a heterosexual union. They charge that the exclusion violates their constitutional rights of equal protection, and several lower courts have ruled in their favor.

Under President Obama, the Justice Department has stopped defending DOMA in court, and the Republican-led House of Representatives has taken up the fight.

The Supreme Court is widely expected to take up at least one of those cases, because it rarely passes on considering decisions that have overturned federal law.

California's Proposition 8 is another situation. That measure, banning same-sex marriages, was passed by voters in 2008 in response to a state Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage. A federal judge struck down Proposition 8, saying it violated the constitution's Equal Protection Clause. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision, but under narrower grounds, saying the state could not take from gay couples a right that they had already been granted.

Stone believes the high court will take up at least one case and rule in a way that strikes down DOMA and/or Proposition 8 without addressing the broader legality of same-sex marriage itself.

“This is an inflammatory issue, and a way of dipping one’s toe in the water,” Stone said.

He and many other Supreme Court observers see a split decision, with Justice Anthony Kennedy casting a swing fifth vote in favor of same-sex couples.

Under that scenario, the much larger issue -- whether it is discriminatory to bar gays and lesbians from getting married -- will be put off, most likely to a different Supreme Court.

Lisa Soronen, executive director of the State & Local Legal Center, which represents state and local governments in Washington, predicted that the Supreme Court would pass on Proposition 8, allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand. If that happens, gay marriage would become legal in California almost immediately.

But the DOMA battle is too important to ignore, she added.

If the court does not take up any DOMA cases, then the stack of challenges will continue to grow, and rulings from lower courts will create a “weird” situation where federal law applies in some places and not in others, Soronen said.

She sees those cases through the prism of state’s rights: historically, the federal government has butted out of family law matters.

“This isn’t a thumbs up or thumbs down on same sex marriage; it’s about the federal government limiting who can get married,” Soronen said.

That narrow sort of view will likely guide the Supreme Court, she said.

David Axelrod has lost his signature mustache — for a good cause.

President Barack Obama's senior strategist had his trademark feature shaved off on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday, in an appearance also broadcast on the "Today" show.

But while Axelrod is now a few whiskers poorer, the epilepsy research non-profit his wife runs is now more than $1 million richer.

"How are we feeling, David?" Joe Scarborough, host of "Morning Joe," asked him on the set of the political talk show.

"Faint," Axelrod said from his seat in a barber's chair, with his wife Susan by his side. "I was up all night, to be honest with you," he added.

After 40 years with his trademark 'stache, Axelrod had promised to shave it off if Susan Axelrod's organization Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy — a condition the couple's oldest child suffers from — could raise more than $1 million.

By Friday morning, the group had raised $1,049,797, according to the campaign's website.

Initially, Axelrod had made a bet with Scarborough over his facial hair concerning the presidential election, not epilepsy, promising to shave it off if Obama lost three key states. Scarborough was supposed to grow a mustache if he lost.

Axelrod won that bet, but public interest in the possibility of his bare face had already been piqued. Scarborough skirted his end of the bet, and the threat of having to grow a mustache, by offering to donate $10,000 to epilepsy research if Axelrod shaved his anyway.

The epilepsy fundraising drive reflected that interest. Donald Trump donated $100,000, while Obama, Carole King and 25,885 others also donated, according to Axelrod and his website. 

Trump, for one, said he felt his money was well spent and complimented Axelrod's new look, saying that it reminded him of his own father's.

"I think he looks great," Trump said in a phone call into "Morning Joe."

A Southern California millionaire with a Christmas wish for a "Latina girlfriend" may be out of luck. His email address was peeled off a billboard just one day after it was plastered on.

 Marc Paskin, 62, purchased a billboard in the San Diego neighborhood of Barrio Logan that declared, "All I Want for Christmas is a Latina Girlfriend."

The outdoor ad also shows a picture of Paskin's smiling face next to a photo of a wishlist, accompanied by his email address.

But the bottom half with Paskin's AOL email address of the billboard was ripped off Friday morning.

Paskin has not returned NBC 7 San Diego's requests for comment.
 

Paskin, a La Jolla real estate investor, was featured on an episode of "Secret Millionaire" last year when he spent a week living on less than $50 a day.

According to "Secret Millionaire," Paskin has donated $125,000 to Detroit families in need in last year's episode.

He’s also given more than $1 million to the UC San Diego Shiley Eye Center, which helps patients regain their sight.

Paskin lost his wife to diabetes and since then has felt compelled to help others in need, according to UCSD.

Police are investigating the discovery of a man's body in Kensington Friday morning.

The body was discovered wrapped and bound by a trashbag inside a cardboard box just before 7 a.m. on the 300 block of East Tusculum Street.

So far, there is no information on the identity of the man or how he died.

 

A pizza deliveryman struck by a hit-and-run driver Wednesday was taken off life support Thursday as the search for his alleged killer continued.

Lou Andro, 45, died Thursday around 5:30 p.m. after being hit about 25 hours outside the Feltonville pizza shop that his parents once owned.

Andro was standing outside Wyoming Pizza at Whitaker Avenue and Wyoming Street around 4:30 p.m. when a four-door dark sedan hit him -- sending him 50 feet through the air, according to Philadelphia Police.

The driver of the car sped off. 

Andro suffered severe head trauma and was taken to Temple University Hospital where he later died, police said.

Police were looking at surveillance video hoping to learn more about the car that hit Andro. Police say they are looking for a dark sedan with front end damage and maybe right passenger side damage.

Anyone with information on this deadly crash should contact Philadelphia Police.

An AutoZone employee was fired two days after he used his own personal firearm to thwart an armed robbery in the store he worked in, WTKR.com reported.

The suspect, known in the area as "the Fake Beard Bandit," according to reports, had allegedly robbed over 30 locations in the York, Va. area, WTKR reported. He was about to do it again before he ran into Autozone employee Devin Mclean.

“I was in fear of my life as soon as he walked through the door and I see the gun. Your heart just starts pounding,” Mclean said.

Once the robber made his way to the front of the store, Mclean said he ran out through the back of the AutoZone and obtained his own weapon from his truck in the parking lot. Mclean confronted the robber, who put his hands in the air before he ran out of the store, according to Mclean.

While the local community and even his own manager said they were happy for his actions, he was fired two days later. AutoZone has a zero tolerance policy against employees who bring their own weapons into the store.

“If I can save somebody’s life, I put that way above a store policy,” Mclean told WTKR.com.
 

This year’s Army-Navy Game presented by USAA marks the 113th edition of the interservice rivalry, and the 84th game to be played on Philadelphia soil.

ARMY-NAVY FAN FEST
11:00 a.m. - Kickoff
Lincoln Financial Field, HeadHouse Plaza
Join the pre-game fun with live music, face painting, interactive games, giveaways and more before kickoff. (Game Ticket Required)

MARCH-ON
12:15 p.m.–1:15 p.m.   
Lincoln Financial Field
Watch the Brigade of Midshipmen and Corps of Cadets march into Lincoln Financial Field complete with a military flyover.  This time-honored procession is a moment to remember.
(Game Ticket Required)

PATRIOT GAMES FINALE: CHALLENGE #5
1:15 p.m.
Lincoln Financial Field
It all comes down to game day and a Stadium Obstacle Relay to determine this year’s Patriot Games champion. (Game Ticket Required)

113TH ARMY-NAVY GAME PRESENTED BY USAA
3:00 p.m. Kick-off   
Lincoln Financial Field
After an inspiring performance of the National Anthem, kickoff for the 113th annual game takes place at 3:00 p.m.

Gloucester Township police say a man who reported being robbed of $200 at gunpoint while at a convenience store fabricated the story to hide the fact that he'd used his paycheck to illegally purchase prescription pills.

Steven Santiago of Williamstown posted bail Thursday after being arrested on several charges, including possession of a controlled dangerous substance and filing a false report to law enforcement.
 
Officers from the Gloucester Township and Winslow police departments responded after 33-year-old Santiago made a 911 call around 2:45 p.m. saying he'd been robbed while at a Wawa in Sicklerville.

Police say a short time later it was discovered he'd fabricated the story.
 
Santiago could not immediately be reached for comment.
 

An Atlantic City man was arrested Thursday in connection with the assault of a 3-month old baby boy, according to prosecutors.

26-year old Lavarrel Thompson is accused of shaking the baby violently, back in October.

The baby suffered head injuries and remains hospitalized for treatment.

Thompson is behind bars on $100,000 bail.

He is ordered to have no contact with the victim.

Among all the FEMA forms and insurance letters Sandy victims will write this holiday season, there's one that offers a direct line to Santa, or at least his helpers.

It's a gift-giving website called Secret Sandy.

It was created nearly 3 weeks ago by freelance producer Joy Huang.

The site annonymously connects families hard hit by Hurricane Sandy with people who want to donate gifts for the holidays.

More than 500 kids and their parents have submitted Christmas wish lists and twice as many have donated.

 

The presidential election has come and gone, but for the city of Philadelphia, the many problems at the polls are still lingering like a hanging chad.

When asked about the lack of unity among the city's 3 commissioners who ran the election, Nutter responded "I'm not Dr. Phil, I'm the mayor of this city. They're adults. They will figure out how to do whatever they need to do."

That is why Mayor Michael Nutter has appointed a 6 member fact-finding team to look into the issues stemming from last month's election. They're tasked with finding out what went wrong on election day and how to fix it for the future.

Citing Philadelphia as the birthplace of freedom, liberty and democracy, Nutter expressed his concern over the city's voting process. "As the mayor of this great city, I want the most efficient, honest and informative election process in the United States," Nutter said.

A number of issues are to blame, acccording to Nutter.

More than 600 polling places throughout the city changed because of federal law requiring handicapped accessibility. As a result, some voters winded up at the wrong place.

Twice as many provisional ballots were cast in this year's election compared to 2008.

The voter i.d. confusion and hurricane Sandy also impacted voter turn out, while some question the way poll workers were trained.

Nutter said, "Let us not engage on the traditional Philadelphia methodology which is to criticize when people do or try to do good.  There is nothing wrong with having fact-finding to make something better."

 

The U.S. Supreme Court made a historic decision when it chose Friday to address same-sex marriage, but the potential outcomes aren't as simple as deciding whether such unions are legal.

The high court could use California's Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act to issue broad decisions that would make it unconstitutional to block same-sex marriages or deny federal benefits to gay spouses. The court could also do the opposite and say such bans are not unlawful, and deal a considerable blow to the gay rights movement.

But legal scholars say the more likely scenario is a set of narrow rulings that support gay marriage but stop short of the kind of grand rulings of the past that settled matters of racial and gender discrimination.

"I think they will likely take the approach that would bite off the least ground," said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor and Supreme Court expert.

The options in each case vary widely.

On Proposition 8, the court could either uphold or reject California voters' 2008 ban on same-sex marriages -- passed in response to a state Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage. But the court actually has four options, legal scholars say:

• It could issue a far-reaching decision that declares that the Constitution protects same-sex marriages, thus invalidating similar bans in dozens of states around the country and allowing gay marriages to take place anywhere, said David Cruz, a University of Southern California law professor who specializes in civil rights and equality issues. This would uphold the decision by a federal judge who struck down Prop. 8 under the Constitution's equal protection clause.
   
• The high court could rule that same-sex couples don't enjoy the same constitutional protections to marriage that opposite-sex couples do. That would keep Proposition 8 on the books, and essentially protect similar measures from being challenged elsewhere, Cruz said.
   
• The justices could also rule that it was wrong for California to strip rights that had already existed, strike it down on those grounds, and leave it at that -- mirroring the narrow decision of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
   
• It could also rule that the sponsors of Prop. 8 did not have proper legal standing to make its case. This would likely send the case backwards through the court system to the original trial court, Cruz said. The overturning of Prop. 8 would probably stand, but the decision wouldn't have any legal influence on cases outside of California.

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Then there's the DOMA case, one of several challenges to the 1996 federal law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. The legislation prohibits same-sex couples in states that have legalized gay marriage from an array of federal benefits, including tax deductions, Social Security survivor benefits and federal employee health insurance.

Several married gay people have challenged DOMA on grounds they were denied assistance they would have otherwise had access to if they were in a heterosexual union. Several of those cases reached the Supreme Court's doorstep this year, but the justices agreed on Friday to take just one, and put off announcements on the others.

Under President Obama, the Justice Department has stopped defending DOMA in court, and the Republican-led House of Representatives has taken up the fight.

The case before the high court involves 83-year-old Edith Windsor, a New York woman who married her longtime partner, Thea Spyer, in 2007 in Canada. Spyer died two years later, and left Windsor her entire estate. Because of DOMA, Windsor could not seek tax exemptions for the inheritance, leaving her with a $363,000 tax bill.

Again, the Supreme Court has a range of options. It could uphold DOMA as constitutional, which many legal scholars see as unlikely. Or the the justices could rule against DOMA and choose to apply one of several tiers of legal scrutiny, depending on how unfair it deems the ban on same-sex marriage. Which level of scrutiny they choose would influence the breadth of the ruling's impact, Cruz said.

The DOMA and Prop. 8 cases are expected to be argued in March and decided in June. As for the other DOMA challenges, they probably won't be denied, just delayed until after the court rules on these two cases, Cruz said.

American public opinion has shifted gradually toward a more lenient view of same-sex marriage in the years since DOMA, and since Proposition 8. On Election Day this year, voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington endorsed gay marriages, bringing to nine the number of states where they are legal (the District of Columbia also allows them).

In May, President Barack Obama said his feelings on the issue had evolved to the point that he was comfortable with same-sex marriage.

Philadelphia Police arrested a man they say shot a 4-year-old boy in South Philadelphia on Monday.

Demarcas Tucker, 26, of West Godfrey Avenue is charged with aggravated assault.

Police say Tucker shot into the back of a minivan as a 30-year-old father loaded the child into the vehicle along the 2700 block of Daly Terrace in the Philadelphia Housing Authority's Wilson Park community.

The child was rushed to CHOP with a gunshot wound to the stomach. His father was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and treated for a graze wound to the head and a gunshot wound to the back. Both were listed in stable condition on Thursday.

An 8-year-old was in the minivan at the time of the shooting but wasn't injured, according to police.


 

Nearly 500 marijuana plants, some over five feet tall, and an elaborate pot growing system were found inside a home along the 2300 block of Frankford Avenue in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, according to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.

Members of the District Attorney's Dangerous Drug Offenders unit and the DEA went into the home on Thursday. Agents say they found 343 full grown marijuana plants, 150 marijuana plants in the incubation stage and three large bags of cut marijuana. In all, over 500 pounds of marijuana were recovered from the house, said officials. The street value of the marijuana is approximately three to ten thousand dollars per pound, according to the District Attorney's Office.

Vinh Quang Nguyen, 41, who lives at the home, was arrested.
 
Agents say there was an elaborate and dangerous electrical wiring system hooked up in the home operating heat lamps used to grow the plants.  Agents also discovered two pots of boiling water with fabric softener inside that were attached to the vent system of the house.  The defendant was attempting to mask the pungent odor of marijuana in the home with the fabric softener fumes, according to agents.

Nguyen’s two small children also lived in the house, and their beds were just 15 feet away from the rooms containing the plants.  The children were at school at the time Nguyen was arrested.

Nguyen is charged with possession with intent to distribute, risking a catastrophe, endangering the welfare of a child and knowing and intentional possession of a controlled substance.

He was arraigned on Thursday night and is being held on $1 million bond.