Delaware
Del. activists and candidates gather at Wilmington poll location to get out the vote
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This story was supported by a statehouse coverage grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
It’s primary election day in the First State, and tens of thousands of Delawareans will head to the polls to cast their vote. But many people avoided what could be long lines and took advantage of the last early voting day on Sunday, including voters in New Castle County.
In June, the Delaware Supreme Court struck down a lower court ruling that barred early voting and permanent absentee voting in the state’s general elections. Lawmakers passed a law in 2019 that allowed 10 days of early voting beginning in 2022. The permanent absentee law was approved in 2010. Early voting and permanent absentee voting in primaries and special elections is already allowed.
Department of Elections data shows at least 839 New Castle County residents cast ballots on Sunday at six locations in the area, including 233 voters at two sites in Wilmington. An enthusiastic crowd of activists and candidates mingled together a short distance from the entrance of the Police Athletic League polling location in Northwest Wilmington, waving signs to promote their campaign or their preferred candidates.
Candidate for Wilmington mayor Velda Jones-Potter and gubernatorial candidate Matt Meyer showed up at the PAL polling site to greet supporters, cast their ballots and energize their base.
Jones-Potter said she was on-site to encourage her supporters to vote and make sure they didn’t experience any trouble casting ballots.
The Department of Elections acknowledged last week that 764 affected voters statewide who were registered automatically through the Department of Motor Vehicles were given incorrect party identification due to a “clerical error.” Of the 764, 328 voters reside in New Castle County and 87 in the city of Wilmington. A DOE spokesperson said the only calls they received were from the PAL Center, all of the affected registrations have been updated, no one had been turned away and everyone has been allowed to vote.
Jones-Potter disputed the agency’s response Sunday.
“I do take exception to two things that the Department of Elections has communicated to the public. One is that no one was turned away. A number of people were, in fact, turned away. Some of them have had the opportunity to vote since, but not everyone,” she said. “And then the second exception that I take is that it’s limited to just a few people, unless and until we know exactly what the cause was. Does it affect absentee ballots?”
The elections department said Tuesday no absentee ballots were impacted by the clerical error.
Humpback whale beaches and dies at Delaware Seashore State Park
The Marine Education, Research and Rehabilitation Institute will perform a necropsy.
A dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach on Jan. 8, according to the nonprofit Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation Institute.
The juvenile male was first seen Jan. 6, floating at sea about 2 miles off the Indian River Inlet, a MERR Facebook post said. The bloated 30-foot whale ultimately beached near a private community in the early afternoon of Jan. 8, the post said.
MERR is attempting to coordinate with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to get equipment to move the whale out of the water and onto the beach to perform a necropsy, the post said. Right now, there isn’t enough information to determine a cause of death.
Delaware saw at least three dead whales last year, in the Indian River Bay, at Delaware Seashore State Park and at Pigeon Point. The first two were humpbacks, while the Pigeon Point whale was a fin whale.
A necropsy on the Delaware Seashore whale found blunt force trauma across its back, indicating it may have been struck by a ship, MERR Director Suzanne Thurman said.
Recently, on Jan. 4, a dead fin whale was found on the bow of a ship at the Gloucester Marine Terminal in New Jersey, which is located in the Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River.
Shannon Marvel McNaught reports on southern Delaware and beyond. Reach her at smcnaught@gannett.com or on Facebook.
A Pennsylvania man is accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from a cemetery in Delaware County.
Jonathan Gerlach, 34, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, is charged with abuse of corpse, criminal mischief, burglary and other related offenses, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse revealed on Thursday, Jan. 8.
Léelo en español aquí
Between November 2025 and Jan. 6, 2026, 26 mausoleums and underground burial sites had been burglarized or desecrated at Mount Moriah Cemetery, which stretches from Yeadon Borough, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia, investigators said.
As police investigated the thefts, they caught Gerlach desecrating a monument at the cemetery on Tuesday, Jan. 6, according to officials. Gerlach was taken into custody and investigators executed a search warrant at his home in Ephrata.
During the search, investigators recovered 100 human skeletons from Gerlach’s home as well as eight more human remains inside a storage locker, according to Rouse.
“Detectives walked into a horror movie come to life the other night guys,” Rouse said. “This is an unbelievable scene that no one involved – from myself to the detectives to the medical examiners that are now trying to piece together what they are looking at, quite literally – none of them have ever seen anything like this before.”
Rouse said some of the stolen skeletons are hundreds of years old.
“We are trying to figure out exactly what we are looking at,” Rouse said. “We quite simply at this juncture are not able to date and identify all of them.”
Rouse also said some of the skeletons are of infants and children.
“It is truly, in the most literal sense of the word, horrific,” Rouse said. “I grieve for those who are upset by this who are going through it who are trying to figure out if it is in fact their loved one or their child because we found remains that we believe to be months old infants among those that he had collected. Our hearts go out to every family that is impacted by this.”
Sources also told NBC10 the thefts are related to a similar case in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Investigators said they are looking at Gerlach’s online community — including his social media groups and Facebook page — to determine if people were buying, selling, or trading the remains.
Gerlach is currently in custody at the Delaware County Prison after failing to post $1 million bail. Online court records don’t list an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
VENTNOR, N.J. (WPVI) — A Delaware woman is behind bars in connection with a hit-and-run crash in November at the Jersey shore.
(The video in the player above is from previous coverage.)
The incident happened around 6:16 p.m. on Nov. 20 in Ventnor, New Jersey.
READ MORE | Video shows Jersey shore hit-and-run crash that left 92-year-old injured
Police said the 92-year-old victim was struck at Ventnor and Newport avenues. He sustained serious injuries and was transported to an area hospital.
Investigators said the driver, Leslie Myers, 51, of Weldin Park, Delaware, fled the scene after the crash.
She was arrested Wednesday on charges of assault by auto, leaving the scene of an accident and other related offenses.
Myers is being held in the Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania, awaiting extradition to New Jersey.
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