STATE
PITTSBURGH — A woman is nursing a black eye and cuts and bruises after she says she was dive-bombed by a hawk outside her home.
Eileen Bridge said she was washing her car outside her Pittsburgh home Saturday when a red-tailed hawk flew right at her head and knocked her unconscious. She said it felt like she was hit by a baseball bat.
She was taken to the hospital and treated for a badly bruised eye and several cuts and bumps on her head.
A pair of hawks moved into a 2-foot-wide nest in a tall pine behind her this spring. Then a nest full of hatchlings soon appeared.
Because of the attacks, the Pennsylvania Game Commission said they are looking to relocate the nest.
SCRANTON — A builder of for-profit youth detention centers has reported to prison for his role in a juvenile justice scandal in which thousands of young offenders were sent to his facilities by a judge who took money from him.Robert Mericle reported Monday to a minimum security prison in Schuylkill County.He was sentenced in April to a year in prison and ordered to pay $250,000 stemming from northeastern Pennsylvania's so-called “kids for cash” scandal.Prosecutors said two judges accepted $2 million in illegal payments from Mericle.Former Luzerne County Judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella Jr. plotted to close the dilapidated county-run juvenile detention center in 2002 and arrange for construction of the PA Child Care facility outside Wilkes-Barre and another lockup in Western Pennsylvania.They're serving lengthy prison sentences.
