Chesco

A man who admitted stealing $20 from a Girl Scout cookie cash box outside a Berwyn supermarket has been arrested and is a suspect in a rash of recent thefts in Chester County, police said. Jevon M. Avis, 31, of Carlisle, Pa., was taken into custody late Tuesday by authorities in Cumberland County. Police said Avis, formerly of Berwyn, confessed to the Jan. 20 robbery of $20 from Girl Scouts selling cookies at a Pathmark store on West Swedesford Road in Berwyn. Right before he took the money from the Girl Scouts, he reached into a plastic container holding donations for the benefit of U.S. troops and took an undisclosed amount of cash, police said.

Richard Adams, an African American laborer, was in his 60s and living near Coatesville when he enlisted in the Union Army on June 26, 1863, less than six months after the Emancipation Proclamation. His enlistment was extraordinary, given that the Civil War recruitment age limit was 45. "He lied and gave his age as 40," said Cliff C. Parker of the Chester County Archives. "I can't give a reason for his joining," Parker said. "He was born in Virginia and, though we can't say, he may have been born into slavery.

For about two weeks, it seemed that Chester County sheep owner Gabriel Pilotti would not have to worry about charges for shooting and killing two dogs belonging to a neighbor after he found them on his property. Now, he does. Amid a growing uproar, Chester County District Attorney Thomas P. Hogan on Friday charged Pilotti, 72, of Chester Springs, with two counts of cruelty to animals and one count of recklessly endangering another person. He did so, he said, after further investigation concluded that Pilotti's actions were not shielded by a state law that permits the execution of dogs attacking domestic animals.

Two Chester County teenagers who were seriously injured in a two-vehicle collision on Kings Highway in Caln Township Wednesday night remain hospitalized this afternoon. Around 8:30 p.m. a 1994 Ford F250 pickup truck driven by Jonathan Norton, 18, left the road and hit a utility pole, Caln police said. A second pickup, a Ford F150 driven by 17-year-old Zach Miles, also left the road, hitting a utility pole and a car parked in a driveway. Norton and the juvenile, who was not identified, were taken to Paoli Hospital.

A West Goshen mother of three pleaded guilty in Chester County Court on Tuesday to helping her lover kill her 33-year-old husband. On the first day of her jury trial - and 12 months after a mistrial - Morgan Mengel, 37, pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Kevin Mengel Jr. Judge Thomas G. Gavin sentenced her to life in prison without possibility of parole. Mengel's lover, Stephen Shappell, 21 at the time of the murder on June 17, 2010, pleaded guilty in December 2011 and received a 40- to 80-year prison term.

POLICE are on the hunt for four men who kidnapped an elderly Chester County couple, robbed their jewelry store and fled in the victims' car. The incident began about 7 p.m. Thursday, when four masked men, wielding handguns, approached Howard Zenker outside his home on Wooded Way in Berwyn, forced entry and stole credit cards and other items from the house, police said. Two of the assailants then forced the husband to drive to the couple's store, Shuler's Jewelers, in East Norriton, where the robbers stole jewelry and money, police said.

Masked men broke into the Main Line home Thursday of a couple who are well-known jewelers, held the woman hostage, kidnapped her husband, and forced him at gunpoint to drive to their Montgomery County store, which was then robbed. Police said the series of crimes began around 7 p.m. in Tredyffrin Township, Chester County, when four intruders confronted the owners of Shuler's Jewelers at their home on Wooded Way. The couple were bound with duct tape while the robbers ransacked the home, said Detective Sgt. Todd Bereda.

A Tredyffrin Township man has been cleared of charges that he used software to spy on his wife. While the couple were divorcing, Jay Anthony Ciccarone, 39, allegedly installed the program Web Watcher on her computer to read her e-mails. His attorney, Ellen Brotman, argued that prosecutors could not prove why Ciccarone used the software. At a pretrial proceeding last Friday, Chester County Judge James P. MacElree II dismissed charges of unlawful use of a computer, intercepting communications - both felonies - and unlawfully accessing stored communications, a misdemeanor.

The body was found in the dead of a winter night, a 19-year-old discovered shot to death on New Street in Coatesville, cash blowing around his body. "He had been shot going to buy drugs from another guy," said Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan. "That's a Coatesville homicide. " The slaying last Jan. 24 of Tre Davis would be the first of 2012, but by no means the last. Three months later, an 18-year-old was found shot on the steps of a brothel. And on June 29, Dominique Williams, 22, was shot to death in a house on Merchant Street.

Chester County police are on the hunt for a man who robbed the Girl Scouts. On Sunday at the Pathmark grocery at 450 West Swedesford Road in the Berwyn section of Tredyffrin Township, a man came up to a table set up for cookie sales by Troop 4305. He reached into a cash box and grabbed about $20 before the box was pulled away. At the same time he reached into a large plastic jar containing cash donations for the military and took an unknown amount of cash. The man, described as in his 20s or 30s, didn't take any cookies.