3/22/22 PA Headlines
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — AP is reporting.. State police have opened a driving under the influence investigation following the deaths of two Pennsylvania troopers and a civilian struck by a vehicle on an interstate in Philadelphia early Monday, state police said. Trooper Martin F. Mack III and Trooper Branden T. Sisca were dispatched after a man was reported walking in the southbound lanes of I-95 near the sports stadiums in south Philadelphia, Capt. James Kemm said. The troopers arrived around 12:45 a.m. Monday and were trying to take the man into custody and walk him back to their vehicle when another vehicle “traveling at a high rate of speed” struck all three, Kemm said. “The impact was so great that it threw the troopers over into the northbound lanes of Interstate 95,” Kemm said.
The vehicle ended up on the right-side shoulder of the highway and the driver remained at the scene. Other arriving troopers found witnesses trying to revive the victims, who were pronounced dead at the scene, Kemm said. “Right now, we are conducting an active investigation that is DUI-related,” Kemm said. The pedestrian’s name is not being released pending notification of his relatives. Mack, 33, enlisted in November 2014 and has been assigned to the Philadelphia barracks since 2015. Sisca, 29, enlisted in February of last year and graduated in August. Col. Robert Evanchick, the state police commissioner, said the troopers “made the ultimate sacrifice,” braving the dangers of traffic at night on the busy highway to aid someone whose own life was in danger.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems won an appeal in Pennsylvania’s highest court on Monday in a bid to ensure that any inspection of its voting machines as part of Republican lawmakers’ inquiry into Pennsylvania’s 2020 election be done by a laboratory that has specific credentials. The Democratic-majority state Supreme Court ruled 5-2, along party lines, to overturn a January decision by a Republican judge on the lower Commonwealth Court. That judge ruled that Dominion could not intervene in a wider case involving an inspection of its equipment used by heavily Republican Fulton County in 2020′s election. Dominion’s court case is but one tentacle of a Republican undertaking in Pennsylvania inspired by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.
Monday’s decision revives Dominion’s request that any inspection of its equipment be conducted by a federally accredited voting system test lab or a national laboratory used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. It comes as Republican lawmakers fight in court to use the contractor of their choice to download “digital data” from Dominion’s election computers and hardware used by Fulton County in 2020′s election. Dominion was the subject of some of the most feverish right-wing conspiracy theories about the election supposedly being stolen from Trump. It has since filed a number of defamation lawsuits against Trump allies and right-wing broadcasters.
