ABINGTON TWP., Pa. (WPVI) — Police have arrested a suspect who they say fired shots at a vehicle near a crowded basketball court in Montgomery County.

Jamell Whitmore, 18, of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, was arrested on Thursday.

The shooting happened on March 22 near a basketball court on the 300 block of Cadwalader Avenue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.

Shooting near Elkins Park basketball courts sends stray bullet into home

Police said multiple callers reported hearing gunfire around 8:15 p.m. and witnessed a large group of people run from the area behind the McKinley Firehouse.

As a vehicle drove by, one of the men in the group, identified by police as Whitmore, ran off to the parking lot to retrieve a gun and began firing multiple shots towards the vehicle.

Police say it’s unclear if the vehicle was hit, but one of the bullets struck a nearby home.

No one in the home was injured.

Police said no innocent bystanders or those involved in the shooting were injured.

The motive for the shooting remains unknown.

“Nationally there are 59 million Americans who are providing care for a loved one and that is 49.5 billion hours of care annually. It’s valued at a trillion dollars,” said Catherine Taylor, the director of AARP Rhode Island; AARP, the nation’s largest non- profit, dedicated to empowering people 50 and older.

In Rhode Island, the report shows 155,000 people serve as caregivers, providing 111 million hours of care.

Barbara Morse reports on unpaid caregivers. (WJAR)

“The total impact is $2.8 billion a year,” said Taylor.

It’s not just babysitting a loved one.

“People are doing a lot more nursing tasks, you know–wound care, injections and things like that and they’re doing a lot more intensive daily care, like bathing, and dressing and feeding than we used to,” she said.

Its latest report–“Valuing the Invaluable.”

“The whole point of this report is to draw attention to how many family care givers there are and what the magnitude of what the need is for their support,” said Taylor.

That includes financial support and respite care.

AARP wants you to know this:

An older man using equipment in a gym. (FILE)

Advertisement

In Rhode Island, temporary caregiver insurance or TCI is available to folks who qualify, for up to eight weeks.

There are federal tax credits you may qualify for. There is help.

“All you have to do is call 211 and say you’re a family caregiver and they will connect you to all of AARP’S trusted information, including a Rhode Island specific guide on resources for caregivers,” she said.

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

The Vermont Senate passed a bill on Thursday that will delay the implementation of Act 181, a contentious 2024 law that overhauled the state’s land use permitting system.

But that vote followed several rounds of heated debate over rolling back or further postponing land conservation measures, fueled by a Tuesday protest attended by hundreds of rural landowners who called on lawmakers to repeal the law altogether.

The sparring over Act 181 has surfaced a rural-urban divide at the Statehouse. Rural conservatives argue that the law’s benefits flow only to Vermont’s larger cities and towns, and that its conservation rules place an undue burden on private property owners. Democrats have defended the law’s goals to both boost housing in downtowns and villages and increase environmental protections elsewhere, though they’ve heeded calls to pump the brakes.

Details: Vermont is overhauling Act 250. Here’s what the development maps look like so far

On the Senate floor, Republicans contended that new development regulations set forth in Act 181, which bolster protections over sensitive ecosystems, effectively undermine personal property rights. Sen. Steve Heffernan, R-Addison, framed the issue around affordability — wealthy second home-owners can afford more land-use permits, he said, but regular Vermonters can’t.

“We must ask ourselves … are we protecting Vermont’s lands, or pricing Vermonters out of it?” Heffernan said.

Democrats, who control the chamber, countered that the new rules are critical for preserving Vermont’s landscape for the good of the broader community.

“Future generations may not have the same ecosystems that we have access to because of development,” said Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor.

The bill in question, S.325, is a set of tweaks to Act 181, which the Legislature passed over Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s objections two years ago.

Act 181 aimed to encourage more homebuilding in already-developed areas of Vermont by removing state level review under Act 250, Vermont’s signature land use law. At the same time, the law beefed up protections for to-be-determined critical natural resources.

The 2024 law mandated a first-of-its-kind mapping effort that will essentially dictate where future development will be subject to Act 250 scrutiny, and where it won’t be, through a tiered land-use classification system.

That mapping process is still underway, and the board overseeing it has asked for more time to complete its work — in part because of feedback from municipal officials and rural residents who objected to early drafts.

S.325 would postpone the implementation of many pieces of Act 181. It would extend temporary housing exemptions, delay the start of a new “road rule” that would require a permit for private road construction over a certain length in much of the state until 2030 and pushes out the beginning of new “Tier 3” rules. These rules would heighten scrutiny over building near headwater streams, habitat connectors and rare natural communities.

Brian Stevenson

/

Advertisement

Vermont Public

The fate of Tier 3 garnered the most attention on the Senate floor. Republicans backed an amendment on Wednesday to scrap the tier entirely.

Sen. Russ Ingalls, R-Essex, a cosponsor of the amendment and an organizer of Tuesday’s rally, argued that the entirety of his Northeast Kingdom district would fall into the tier and suggested that a majority of Vermonters currently live in Tier 3 areas.

“We should be able to live like the rest of Vermont does, and not be restricted,” Ingalls said.

Yet the bounds of Tier 3 have not yet been set, and the Land Use Review Board, which is creating its boundaries, has said the tier will only make up a small portion of land in Vermont. The board is also looking to limit what kinds of construction would trigger the need for an Act 250 permit in these zones.

“It may be that a single house, for instance, depending on where it is, doesn’t even matter. It won’t be counted,” said Sen. Seth Bongartz, D-Bennington, one of the architects of Act 181 when he served in the House.

The amendment to roll back Tier 3 ultimately failed in a party-line vote on Wednesday. A separate amendment to further delay its implementation failed on Thursday. Another Republican-backed amendment that was adopted eases state regulations for housing in rural areas that lack local zoning.

Scott, Act 181’s longest-standing detractor, vetoed the legislation in 2024, arguing that it was a “conservation bill” that did little to boost housing growth in rural areas. The governor said at a Thursday press conference that he thinks the bill to delay its implementation is “moving in the right direction, but we need more.”

Scott was pleased to see protesters this week heeding his message.

“I’ve said this before: this hurts rural Vermont. And now they’re just waking up to the fact that, yes, indeed, it will,” Scott said.

The bill now heads to the House. House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, said she sees the need to delay Act 181 — and that she hears the upswell of pushback against the law from beyond the Statehouse.

“We absolutely hear the concerns from different corners of the state of Vermont and we take those seriously,” Krowinski said.

Brian Stevenson

Advertisement

/

Vermont Public

S.325 will land in the House environment committee, helmed by Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, one of Act 181’s initial drafters. Sheldon understands the rationale to postpone pieces of its implementation, she said in a Wednesday interview. But she is not open to rolling back elements of the 2024 law.

Sheldon believes that some of the arguments raised by opponents of the law are overstated and misguided. She still stands by the core aims of the law, she said, gesturing toward Vermont’s state motto.

“We’re balancing freedom and unity, right? That’s what we do,” Sheldon said.