Delaware

We must do more to prevent gun violence in Delaware

Published

2 years ago

June 12, 2024

Press Room

We must do more to prevent gun violence in Delaware

3-minute read

Matt Meyer
| Special to the USA TODAY Network

On Memorial Day at around 1:50 a.m., a stolen flatbed truck backed into the front door of Miller’s Gun Store. The thieves made out with a cache of firearms, many of which have likely been sold on the illicit market. This isn’t the first time a gun store has been robbed in New Castle County. In 2020, five individuals stole 35 firearms from the American Sportsman gun store in Stanton. Last year, one woman admitted she stole more than half a million rounds of ammunition from a local Cabela’s to sell on the illicit market.

Stolen firearms and ammunition are making our communities less safe. Stolen guns are nine times more likely to be used in a crime than legally purchased guns, according to a study from UC Davis. Our first responders are confronting the horrific aftermath of gun violence. Last year, New Castle County Paramedics responded to 120 gunshot victims. 123 Delawareans are killed by guns and 305 are wounded in an average year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

Gun violence is a public health epidemic that impacts every level of society in America. For that reason, every elected official at every level of government should embrace commonsense solutions to make our communities safer. I applaud state Sen. Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman, Rep. Melissa Minor-Brown, Gov. John Carney and all the advocates who helped make the permit-to-purchase bill become law. We need to build on this success and continue to pass additional gun safety laws at every level of government.

Gun violence should not be a left or right issue. That’s why I worked with a bipartisan group of councilmembers, Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick, Councilman Bill Bell and Councilman Timothy Sheldon, along with the Delaware Coalition Against Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, March For Our Lives, and other gun safety advocates to propose the New Castle County Gun Safety Package. This package of 3 ordinances will leverage our county land use authority and state law to:

enhance security at gun stores by requiring they implement best security practices to protect against theft, including video surveillance, security alarms, bars, security screens, and physical barriers on doors and windows, and bollards and other physical barriers to prevent the use of motor vehicles to breach all buildings where firearms are stored;
prohibit firearms, ammunition, and explosives in county government buildings; and
restrict where future firearm retail businesses can be located within the county. Specifically, they will not be permitted within 500 ft of residential areas, 1,000 ft of schools, daycares, or government parks, and 1,500 ft of another firearm retail establishment.

These ordinances will help to make it harder for criminals to steal guns from gun stores and sell them on the illicit market, make our government buildings safer for county employees and members of the public, and ensure that new gun stores can’t be located next to residential communities, daycares, schools, government parks, or another gun store. This last ordinance is important because it will help prevent additional gun stores in sensitive areas and could help reduce gun dealer density. Increases in gun dealer density have led to increases in gun homicides and those effects are more pronounced in Black communities.

I want to thank County Council for passing the first two gun safety ordinances, focused on enhancing security at gun stores and prohibiting guns in county facilities. I will proudly sign both ordinances into law. Ordinance 24-084, which will restrict where future gun stores can be located, will be heard by the PLUS committee and Planning Board before it comes to County Council for discussion and a vote in the Fall.

Local governments need to be part of the solution for gun safety, and we could do more if the state would allow it. Unfortunately, Delaware has preemption laws, which severely limit local governments’ ability to regulate guns. New Castle County, Wilmington, or any local government ought to be able to enact additional gun safety laws to better protect our communities. Delaware should eliminate the preemption laws so local governments can do more to help make our communities safer. Removing the preemption laws would only allow local governments to add more gun safety statutes. Importantly, no local government would be able to roll back the state’s existing gun safety laws.

Guns are now the leading cause of death for children in this country. And in some U.S. zip codes, young men face greater risk of firearm death than those deployed to war. As a nation, we have failed to adequately address this epidemic of violence. Delaware and New Castle County have taken important steps to improve gun safety and make our communities safer. But to end the epidemic of gun violence, we need to continue to enact commonsense gun safety laws at every level of government.

Matt Meyer is New Castle County Executive.

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Delaware

Wilmington’s first homicide of 2026 claims life of 19-year-old

Published

7 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Wilmington’s first homicide of 2026 claims life of 19-year-old

A 19-year-old man was shot dead in Wilmington’s Southbridge neighborhood in the early hours of Jan. 9, police said.

Wilmington officers arriving to the 200 block of S. Claymont St. about 3:30 a.m. found the teen there.

The teen, whom police have not named, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Anyone with information about this shooting should contact Wilmington Police Detective Derek Haines at (302) 576-3656. People can also provide information to Delaware Crime Stoppers at (800) TIP-3333 or delawarecrimestoppers.com.

Violence by the numbers

This is the first homicide reported this year in Delaware, which last year saw a slight drop in all violent killings.

Delaware police reported 52 people being killed in violent crimes in 2025, a drop of nearly 12% when compared with 59 people killed in 2024, according to a Delaware Online/The News Journal database.

While the number of people killed in homicides statewide is down, the number of people killed by gunfire in Delaware was up in 2025 for the third year in a row.

According to the Delaware Online database, 47 were shot dead in Delaware last year. That was one more victim (46) than in 2024, three more (44) than in 2023 and nine more (38) than in 2022.

Despite the increase in gun-related deaths, there were fewer people shot last year in Delaware for the second year in a row.

Police reported 164 people being shot last year in Delaware. The previous year saw 195 people shot and police reported 210 people being shot in 2023.

This was the fewest people shot in Delaware since 2018, when police reported 146 people being shot statewide.

Send tips or story ideas to Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299 or eparra@delawareonline.com.

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Delaware

MERR responds to dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach

Published

19 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

MERR responds to dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach

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.

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Delaware

Pa. man accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from Delco cemetery

Published

1 day ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Pa. man accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from Delco cemetery

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.

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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.

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