A “quiet” Pennsylvania father allegedly stabbed his baby son and tossed his tiny, injured body into the snow last week as part of a “sacrifice,” prosecutors chillingly revealed Thursday.

Michael Phillips, 44, was arrested after police responded to a call about a stabbing on Wednesday at an apartment complex in Coatesville just before 11:40 a.m., according to the Chester County District Attorney’s Office.

After arriving at the home, police discovered that Phillips had allegedly stabbed his 3-month-old son in the abdomen after the infant’s mother said he made comments about “having to sacrifice the baby” and had come at her with a knife, the DA said.

Philips allegedly tried to stab his baby son several times, but only managed to strike him once, the mother told police.

After the father launched the alleged freak assault, the terrified mother grabbed the injured child and her 9-year-old son to flee the residence, prosecutors added.

As the older son ran to get help, Philips allegedly followed the mother outside, grabbed the baby from her arms, and “threw the infant in the snow.”

The mother heroically “used her body to shield her child from further harm” until first responders arrived at the scene.

Officers quickly got the infant medical attention and flew him to a local hospital in “very serious condition,” according to the Coatesville police department.

As of Thursday, the baby boy was listed in critical but stable condition, police said.

One of Phillips’ neighbors, Edward Rivers, told NBC10 that he saw the father with his baby and older son around 8 a.m. on the day of the stabbing.

“He’s always been a quiet, nice guy,” Rivers told the outlet.

“Every time I see him, he says, ‘What’s up?’ This morning I saw him. He walked outside with his son and I saw him. He smiled to me, said goodbye like normal and walked out. To me, it was surprising because he seemed like a really nice guy. He was really a good neighbor.”

Phillips had been charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, simple assault, possessing an instrument of crime, and recklessly endangering another person, the DA’s office said.

He is currently being held without bond at Chester County Prison.

“Coatesville Police and local EMS heroically worked to give this infant a chance to survive. Our thoughts go to the family during this incredibly difficult time,” Coatesville District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe said in a statement.

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The cost of health insurance is rising across the board, even among people who get their coverage through an employer, new data shows.

Workers in states like Pennsylvania are spending a higher percentage of their paychecks for employer-sponsored health insurance than in previous years, according to a new report published Wednesday by The Commonwealth Fund.

A Pennsylvania resident with single-person coverage paid on average more than $4,000 total in premium contributions and annual deductible costs in 2024, the data shows, which represented about 9.5% of the state’s annual median household income.

“If you just think about it, one out of every $10 that you have in your pocket today could potentially be going to health care over the course of the year,” said David Radley, senior scientist at The Commonwealth Fund’s Tracking Health System Performance initiative.

Those costs were up 27% from the prior year and an increase from where costs were several years ago in 2020, according to the report.

For families, the amount they paid in premiums and deductibles for their employer-sponsored health insurance plans was even greater, reaching more than $10,000 a year.

“At that level, for some families, [it] forces them to make tough decisions,” Radley said. “Even if they have health insurance coverage, they may be thinking twice, ‘Should I really go to the doctor if I’m not feeling well? Should I get this particular test? You know, should I fill this prescription?’”

Experts say rising insurance costs for businesses and their employees is a consequence of growing health care spending trends nationally, which involve how often people use services and how much they pay for them.

All of that, Radley said, can be driven by hospital consolidation that increases prices for medical services, ongoing health care labor shortages, inflation in the cost of supplies, high utilization of pricey medications like GLP-1 drugs and more.

“Ultimately, I think you have to tackle both price and utilization if we want to sort of rein in overall spending,” he said. “And that’s really hard to do, because we don’t want to be in a position where we limit access to things that are really beneficial for people. We don’t want to have to ration care in that way. That’s not what our system is about.”

A compact storm will bring some snow to portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York later Sunday into Monday. Snowfall amounts will generally be a light 1-2″ but there could be some isolated pockets of 3-4″ amounts, especially near I-195 in New Jersey.

Low pressure currently over the Southern Plains will track east along the Gulf Coast states tonight through Sunday. A warm front will develop out ahead of this low, and on this warm front, overrunning precipitation will push into parts of the Mid Atlantic, specifically the  Delmarva, extreme southern New Jersey, and the Delaware Valley late Sunday afternoon. Temperatures will be warm enough for precipitation to fall as plain rain at the start.

On Sunday night, low pressure will  track into the Southeastern U.S. and then move north into the Mid-Atlantic. It appears the storm track will take the system off of the North Carolina coast near Cape Hatteras late Sunday night and track it east-north-east out to sea on Monday.

Late Sunday night towards Monday morning, rain falling over southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey will change to snow. With cold air in place north of there, all precipitation should fall as snow. A widespread 1-2″ of snow is expected across eastern Pennsylvania, the northern half of New Jersey, southeastern New York including New York City and Long Island, and southwestern Connecticut.

It is possible just enough moisture and just enough cold air will mingle over portions of east-central Pennsylvania and central New Jersey to create isolated pockets of 3-4″ of snow. While possible, this type of heavier snow would be an outlier and would not be the rule with this system.

No advisories have been issued yet, but the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, New Jersey says a Winter Weather Advisory may be needed for portions of New Jersey Sunday night and Monday morning should these light snow amounts verify.

The compact storm system will exit the coast Monday helping set the stage for a dramatic warm-up for the Mid Atlantic.  High pressure will builds into the Eastern Seaboard on Monday, then will establish itself offshore Tuesday through Wednesday. In this type of configuration, a return flow will sets up at the surface while a zonal flow sets up aloft. This allows for warm air advection to develop, and temperatures will finally push to above normal levels.

Although relatively warm for this time of the year, it will also remain cloudy. The temperatures should allow for some of the abundant snowpack to start to melt, but it may not melt as much as it could due to the cloudy skies.