A 19-year-old man is dead after police say he was dragged out of his Pennsylvania home by several gunmen and was later found lying on the side of a road at least two miles away.

On Sunday, shortly after 2 p.m., police responded to a home invasion report at a house in West Pottsgrove Township, about 30 miles north-west of Philadelphia.

Police say several gunmen entered the home and demanded money from the homeowners. Neighbors say an older woman lives at the home with her adopted children.

"I believe that she adopted those children, maybe three or four," said Dee Bleacher.

The gunmen then allegedly dragged one resident, 19-year-old Kareem Ali Borowy, out of the house at gunpoint. Investigators say Borowy was targeted and that the home invasion was not a random act.

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Shortly before 2:30 p.m., officials say a passing motorist found Borowy lying on the side of a road in Lower Pottsgrove Township. He was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after ambulance crews arrived.

Bleacher says there have been prior issues at the house where the home invasion took place.

"Police have been there numerous times," said Bleacher. "Maybe once every two months on average."

Investigators have not yet revealed how Borowy died and they are still trying to determine a motive.

Sources tell NBC10's Daralene Jones that preliminary information suggests that drugs were involved however.

No arrests have been made. Police have not yet released any descriptions of the suspects. 

It's what relatives of so many missing people hold on to: the hope that their loved one will be found alive days, months, even years after disappearing. But for Brenda Heist, the Pennsylvania woman found this week in Florida 11 years after she vanished, the circumstances surrounding her disappearance have tainted the news for her family.

"I'm hurt so much that she got up and left me and my brother," Morgan Heist, Brenda Heist's 19-year-old daughter, told NBCPhiladelphia.com. "It's not that I hate her. It's just that I don't think she deserves to be in my life at this point."

Heist went missing from her Litiz, Pa., home in February 2002. Dinner for her two children — 8 and 12 at the time — was found defrosting in the kitchen on the day she disappeared, and the laundry had been started. Days later, Pennsylvania authorities found her abandoned car.

On Wednesday, Heist, 54, turned herself into a sheriff's deputy in Key Largo, Fla., telling him she thought she was wanted in a neighboring county. When authorities ran her name through their database, it came up as "missing and possibly deceased," the Monroe County Sheriff's Office said.

According to Lititz Borough police, Heist was overwhelmed with her life when she decided to abandon her family. She and her husband were going through an amicable divorce at the time, but she had just learned she had been denied housing support, police said.

“She explained to me that she just snapped,” Lititz Borough Police Det. John Schofield, who met with Heist on Monday, told The Associated Press.

Heist's hair, brown when she went missing, is now blond with gray roots. Her face is sunken. According to Lititz Borough police, feeling overcome by the pressures of her life, she went to a park near her central Pennsylvania home on the day she left her home in 2002. There, as she cried, she met a group of homeless hitchhikers who reached out to her, reported The AP.

She joined the hitchhikers, who were Florida-bound, and once arriving there, she slept under bridges and in tents, and ate food thrown out in restaurant dumpsters, according to what she told police.

Heist then moved in with a man in a camper in Key West for about seven years, working odd jobs, Lititz police said. She recently became homeless again, however, and according to Schofield, turned herself in because "she said she was at the end of her rope, she was tired of running."

Her husband, Lee, had briefly been investigated as a suspect in Heist's disappearance, but was cleared.

"I thought for probably about two years based on some of the information that she had been carjacked," he told NBCPhiladelphia.com after learning the woman he had asked courts to declare legally dead several years ago was still alive.  "I just wish her that she'll get well, whatever the problems are."

Lee Heist has since remarried.

"I think there's nothing we have to say to each other," Lee told NBCPhiladelphia.com.

Neither he nor his daughter Morgan have plans to reunite with Heist right now.

"I don't want her to tell me she missed me. I don't want her to tell me she loves me. I don't want a sob story," Morgan said.

Heist, who had worked as a car dealership bookkeeper, apologized for what she did to her family.

"She has a birth certificate and a death certificate, so she's got a long ways to make this right again," Schofield said.

Her daughter said an apology doesn't make up for her mom's absence.

"It was tough," Morgan told NBCPhiladelphia.com. "Every prom -- my brother graduated from high school and college, I graduated [from high school]. She wasn't there, you know? She wasn't there for the most important parts of my life."

It's unclear what's next for Heist, who was put in protective custody but did not require medical treatment when she turned herself in, according to the Monroe County sheriff's office.

"She appeared to be in relatively good health. She said she was tired," Becky Herrin, spokesperson for Monroe County sheriff's office, said.

Her mother, Jean Copenhaver of Brenham, Texas, told The AP she has spoken with her daughter since she turned herself in.

"She just said she thought the family wouldn't want to talk to her because of her leaving," Copenhaver said. "And we all assured her that wasn't the case and we all loved her and wanted to be with her."

Brian Hamacher of NBCMiami.com and Monique Braxton of NBCPhiladelphia.com contributed to this report.

Related content:

• Pennsylvania mom who went missing in 2002 turns up alive in Florida
• More on this story from NBCPhiladelphia.com
• More on this story from NBCMiami.com
  

Investigators say a Pittsburgh man killed his wife with a pickaxe after the couple had an argument.
 
Bruce Cook, 62, was charged Thursday with criminal homicide and abuse of a corpse in the death of 57-year-old Lois Cook.

A friend called police Wednesday because Lois Cook missed work.
 
Police said they arrived at the Cooks' home Wednesday night and found dried blood on the floor of the kitchen heading toward the basement steps. Investigators said they found Lois Cook's body under a tarp in the basement.

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Police said Bruce Cook hit his wife with some type of blunt object before striking her in the head with a pickaxe.
 
A neighbor described the victim as a caring woman and referred to her husband as "a ticking time bomb."

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www.crickett.com

Young target shooters and hunters pose with their guns on the "Kids Corner" web page of Crickett, a line of rifles made for kids.

The gun was small and light, the training wheels of firearms. The .22-caliber, single-shot Crickett rifle turned deadly on Tuesday, officials in Kentucky said, when a 5-year-old Cumberland County boy shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in what the coroner described to a local paper as “just one of those crazy accidents.”

The toddler was shot when the boy was playing with the rifle, as Kentucky state police said in a statement. The gun, a type of rifle made specifically for kids, had been given to the boy as a gift last year and kept in a corner, and the family did not realize a shell was in the chamber, Cumberland County Coroner Gary White told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The Crickett is one of two lines of .22-caliber rifles for kids manufactured by the Pennsylvania-based Keystone Sporting Arms. The company acquired the maker of the similar Chipmunk rifle in 2007, a purchase that positioned the company as “the leading rifle supplier in the youth market,” according to the company’s website.

On the site’s “Kids Corner,” young target shooters and hunters pose with their guns, and videos on the company’s YouTube channel promote the gun as fun for the whole family.

Keystone Sporting Arms, which says on its website that it made 60,000 rifles in 2008, did not return requests for comment from NBC News.

Firearms made for minors represent a new market for gun makers, said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. As the gun market has been saturated, Sugarmann said, gun makers have followed a “path trailblazed by a wide range of other industries, particularly the tobacco industry, and focused its efforts on women and children.”

Keystone Sporting Arms

Pennsylvania-based Keystone Sporting Arms manufactures and markets rifles for children. They are "the leading rifle supplier in the youth market," according to the company's website.

Yet despite the availability of triggers for tiny fingers, gun makers and marketers are hesitant to actually spell out what age a child should be before handling his or her first firearm, said Sugarmann. Crickett's website, for instance, makes no references to appropriate age ranges for their child-sized weapons.

“There’s a recognition that the majority of the American public has concerns about putting guns in the hands of children,” he said.

Through studies and promotional materials, some sporting associations encourage young people to take up hunting and shooting as recreational activities, and point to potential benefits -- both for avid gun-owners and youths themselves -- of young people handling firearms.

A study conducted on behalf of the Hunting Heritage Trust and the National Shooting Sports Foundation in January 2012 asked young people ages 8 to 17 about how they viewed hunting and target shooting. A 385-page report on the telephone survey said the results were clear: Young people who were exposed to hunting and shooting were more likely to have a positive view of those activities.

“The focus groups also revealed substantial willingness among youths to introduce their friends and peers to activities that they themselves participate in and enjoy,” the report concluded. “This tendency must be encouraged among youth hunting and shooting ambassadors, as introduction through direct involvement and experience represents the most effective recruitment strategy.”

“Junior Shooters” covers the recreational use of firearms by young people, publishing about two or three issues a year since 2007. Available for download online, the magazine features articles written by adults as well as shooters as young as 10, alongside ads from firearms makers including Glock and Heckler & Koch.

“The perspective is you can be involved in the shooting sports, you can have a gun, you can have a career, you can go to the Olympics, you can represent the United States, and you can still do it safely,” said editor-in-chief Andy Fink.

The magazine prints about 30,000 copies per issue, Fink said.

“Each person who is introduced to the shooting sports and has a positive experience is another vote in favor of keeping our American heritage and freedom alive,” Fink wrote in the winter 2012 issue of "Junior Shooters," above a warning that the sale, possession, or transport of gun products shown in the magazine may be regulated. “They may not be old enough to vote now, but they will be in the future.”

Under federal law, children under 18 cannot buy guns themselves. Regulations on how children access firearms and who can be held negligent for a child’s use of a gun is left to the states, said Lindsay Nichols, attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

“Kentucky has certain laws to prevent children from gaining access to handguns, but those laws don’t apply to rifles or shotguns,” Nichols said.

The mother of the two young Kentucky children was home when the shooting happened and had stepped outside for a minute when she heard the soft pop of the fatal gunshot, said Kentucky State Police spokesman TFC Billy Gregory.

“Federal law prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone under 18, so that means that the child couldn’t be the actual purchaser, but you could, and it’s completely legal, for an adult to buy a gun for a child as a gift,” said Nichols. The adult purchaser would undergo a background check if the gun is bought from a federally licensed firearms dealer, such as at a gun store.

In its spring 2012 edition, “Junior Shooter” ran a separate NSSF-backed report that claimed that “hunting with firearms is one of the safest recreational activities in America.” The report said that a person is 11 times more likely to be injured playing volleyball and 34 times more likely to be injured skateboarding than hunting.

Almost 1,500 children under the age of 18 die every year as a result of shootings, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

National statistics on how many young people are shot a year are often unreliable, said Daniel Webster of the John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, due to state-by-state differences in how shooting incidents are reported.

“Unfortunately national estimates on how many children accidentally kill one another with firearms are unreliable, as states vary in how they code these deaths,” Webster said in an email. “State A may code an incident as a homicide, whereas State B will code the same type of incident as an accidental shooting.”

It is “a little premature” to say whether charges will be pressed in the death of the young Kentucky girl, state police spokesman Gregory said. The investigation remains open.

 Related:

• Five-year-old boy accidentally shoots, kills sister
• Toomey: Background check plan failed because of Republican politics
• Support soars for tougher gun laws, surveys show

PHILADELPHIA -- A quick-thinking bank teller is being credited with helping to save the lives of seven people who were being held hostage. 

Police say three gunmen broke into the Levittown Trace Apartments on Ford Road in Pennsylvania's Bristol Township early Monday morning. The men, identified as 38-year-old Orlando McNeil, 21-year-old Daesean Smith and 18-year-old Dennis Redding, allegedly held four adults and three children hostage at gunpoint inside the complex. Police say the group, which included two toddlers, was held captive for over nine hours.

According to the Philly Burbs, one of the victims had recently received an $80,000 payout on his late mother’s life insurance policy. Police say the men demanded that he withdraw the entire amount or they would harm his family.

Police say the victim went to a nearby PNC Bank around 10 a.m. on Monday and asked the teller for $80,000 in cash, claiming his family and friends had been kidnapped. That’s when, police say, the bank teller sprang into action.

“The alert teller contacted the police,” said Lieutenant Terry Hughes of the Bristol Township Police Department. “At that point we happened to be in the area and at the right place at the right time.”

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Officers responded to the apartment where they found the three suspects. Police say Smith and Redding tried to flee but were quickly captured while McNeil managed to escape. He was later found and arrested Monday night. Investigators say McNeil was the mastermind behind the kidnapping and ransom scheme. Police also say they recovered two guns near the complex.

The three men are charged with kidnapping, robbery, burglary and other related offenses

A shotgun-wielding man killed his ex-wife in a parking lot in Feasterville, Pa., on Thursday night.

The woman had just left a dress shop on Bustleton Pike with her 16-year-old daughter and they were sitting in the car when Kenneth Philipp pulled up behind them, jumped out of his car, grabbed his shotgun and opened fire, according to Lower Southampton Township Police.

"We know that there were three shots fire at the scene ...  but we do not know how many were fired into the car," said Lower Southampton Township Police Chief William Wiegman.

The teenager was injured by broken glass and her mother died, police said.

Officers quickly tracked down Philipp to the intersection of Buck and Holland Road in Northampton, Pa.

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Investigators say he got out of the car and started firing at the officers. One of the officers fired back, killing Philipp.

The 50-year-old man was just released from jail back in February for assaulting his ex-wife with a knife, police say.

The Bucks County District's Attorney's office is helping with the investigation. 

A 17-year-old student died after being shot at a playground on Thursday across the street from his Philadelphia high school.

Bernard Scott was an Overbrook High School student. Police say he was an innocent bystander of the shooting. Another 17-year-old, who was not immediately identified, remained in critical condition Thursday night.

Police tell NBC10 that this all began as a fight between a group of teenagers around 3:45 p.m. at the Tustin Playground at N 60th Street and Lancaster Avenue. Witnesses say two people pulled out guns and started shooting.

NBC10's Chris Cato talked with the Good Samaritan who found Scott in a blood-covered shirt, collapsed on the curb. Antoine Gardiner says he called 911 first, then rushed the teen to Lankenau Medical Center in his truck and wheeled him into the emergency room.

"I'm just talking to him, trying to keep him awake. I'm gonna get you to the hospital, just take it easy," said Gardiner, who didn't hear that Scott died until NBC10's Cato shared the sad news.

"Whew. Man. My heart just goes out to the family, I just wish I could have done a little more than what I did," said Gardiner.

Police say a third teen who was shot is one of the suspected gunmen. After being treated at the hospital, the 19-year-old will be taken into police custody.

The second gunman is 20 years old, police say, and they credit an eyewitness for helping identify him as the shooter.

Sharletta Ambey tells NBC10's Nefertiti Jaquez after witnessing the shooting, she watched as the gunman took off running. Ambey says she went speeding after him in her car.

"I proceeded to follow him, and as I got across Jefferson and I said to him, 'Why don't you stand right there and give yourself up.' He told me to mind my business before I got shot," said Ambey. She was able to flag down a police officer and point him out.

School officials say it happened as members of Overbrook's baseball team were practicing on a nearby field and that players ran for cover. Some students were inside for after-school programs and the building was locked down until 5 p.m.

Both alleged shooters remained in custody Friday morning.

According to police records, there have been more than 50 shootings at recreation centers and playgrounds since 2010.

Just last week, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter signed a bill banning guns at Philadelphia playgrounds and recreation centers. Violators would face a $2,000 fine.

Parents of children at Overbrook high school recently responded to a school survey, with 20 percent saying they consider the area outside of the school "not safe."

Famous alumni of Overbrook includes actor Will Smith and basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain.

A University of Pittsburgh grad student who was nervous about her ability to teach a class instead made two bomb threats so it would be canceled, campus police said.

Online court records don't list an attorney for Nancy Bruni, 34, of New Kensington, Pa., who didn't immediately return a call seeking comment on charges of terroristic threats, and threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Pitt police charged the School of Arts & Science grad student earlier this week with phoning in a threat, and then leaving a note about a bomb in a campus restroom on March 20, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Thursday.

Police eventually traced the call to her phone and confronted Bruni last week, when she allegedly confessed to making both threats.
 
Bruni told police she suffers from anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder and had stopped taking her medications because her health insurance had recently ended.

That anxiety led her to search for a way to cancel the class scheduled from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., police said in a criminal complaint.

Bruni was angry when campus police didn't alert students after the phone threat, so she left the note saying: "Two bombs will be detonated in Posvar hall on March 20th 6:30 p.m. 730,'' the complaint said. The note corresponded to the 5 p.m. call that referenced bombs going off at 6:30 and 7:30 that evening, police said.

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When students found the note, two notified Bruni while one called campus police. When the school again didn't alert students to evacuate, Bruni's students became upset and she used that as an excuse to cancel the "Health and Illness'' class herself, police said.
 
Pitt spokesman John Fedele said police searched the building with a bomb-sniffing dog and explosive detectors, but didn't alert students because the threats were deemed "lower level.''
 
Bruni wasn't arrested, but is being mailed a court summons to appear for a June 12 preliminary hearing.

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Police in Philadelphia are on the hunt for four men who allegedly kidnapped and repeatedly raped a La Salle University student on Easter Sunday.

The 20-year-old woman told police she was walking off-campus on the 4800 block of 10th Street around 10 p.m. Suddenly, she says, a black van pulled up beside her and four men jumped out. They allegedly grabbed her and forced her inside the vehicle before driving off.

Police have not yet revealed where the men took the woman. Once they arrived, however, the woman says they repeatedly raped her before dropping her off at an unknown location and fleeing the scene.

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Despite the police investigation, the university did not notify students at the school since the alleged kidnapping happened a mile away from campus. University spokesman Jon Caroulis says, however, that officials met with the student and her family and "offered support."

"This isn't something that anyone wants to hear about," said Karla Fernandez, a sophomore at the school. "It could've been anyone."

Police say the suspects are four men between the ages of 20 and 25. The woman also told investigators one of the men had the tattoo "MM" on his face.

Those with information on the case are asked to contact Philadelphia Police.

Wyatt Erb couldn’t look away when he and his wife spotted a dog clinging to life as they walked near a creek in north-east Pennsylvania, Saturday. The lab mix was tied to a rock while inside the rising water.

“The leash was actually hooked to a stone in the ground,” said Erb. “It’s not something the dog could have done by itself."

Erb quickly took action and went inside the Neshaminy Creek, in Bristol Township, north-east of Philadelphia, to get the dog out. Sergeant Thomas Gaffney of the Bristol Police Department believes the action saved the animal’s life.

“She would have drowned more than likely if the water got high enough,” said Gaffney.

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Gaffney says the dog suffered years of abuse and had a tumor on her hind leg that was never treated. He also believes it was the owner who left her tied up inside the creek in an attempt to kill her.

If the dog’s owner is found and has no history of animal cruelty, he or she could only be charged with a fine. Gaffney believes that punishment is not enough however. He vows to work with the District Attorney to stack charges of neglect and abandonment against the owner.

“You could adopt it or humanely euthanize it,” said Gaffney. “You can do many other things but to do what the person did makes no sense.”

In addition to the tumor, the dog also suffered eye infections and is extremely emaciated. She will be taken to the Bucks County SPCA later this week where she will be available for adoption. Police also believe the dog is between 8 and 11 years of age.

Centre County Correctional Facility

An undated booking photo released by the Centre County Correctional Facility in Bellefonte, Pa., shows Mark A. Miscavish. Miscavish, a former state trooper, killed his estranged wife with a shotgun inside a central Pennsylvania supermarket Thursday, March 28, 2013. and then killed himself.

A former Pennsylvania state trooper killed his estranged wife on Thursday before taking his own life in a Decatur Township grocery store, according to state police and local media.

Investigators said Mark Miscavish, 51, went to the County Market, where his wife Traci worked, found her in an upstairs office and shot her with a shotgun before shooting himself at about 10 a.m.

Traci Miscavish, 49, filed for divorce on Friday, according to Centredaily.com. Her husband was a state policeman for 15 years, the Web site said.

Mark Miscavish was arrested on Jan. 23 after he allegedly assaulted his wife and threatened to kill her, according to Centredaily.com.

Traci Miscavish was granted a protection-from-abuse order while her husband faced charges stemming from the incident, the site said.

Decatur Township is about 130 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

A suspicious blast that leveled a home brought the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and explosive-detecting dogs to rural Pennsylvania on Tuesday, after the explosion killed a man who was due in court that day and injured two other people.

The explosion in Clearfield Township happened Tuesday just before 9 a.m., when Bradley Kollar, 40, was supposed to be sentenced in the county court for pleading guilty to drug charges. Instead, investigators arrived at the scene to find Kollar dead, and a homeowner and his teenage son injured, said Pennsylvania State Trooper John Matchik. 

"Upon arrival, [state police] found a two-story house completely leveled, with the homeowner trapped inside the rubble," Matchik said. "The remnants of a vehicle were recognized in front of the house. From a preliminary sense, the damage appeared to originate from that vehicle."

The ATF is still investigating what types of materials were involved in the device that was detonated from Kollar's truck, which investigators believe Kollar drove up to the home before detonating the explosive device Tuesday morning. The FBI, explosives experts and local fire departments are also assisting in the investigation. 

Kollar, of Hastings, Pa., was a "known acquaintance" of William Shaner, 44, the homeowner, Matchik said. Investigators believe Kollar called Shaner before driving to his house with explosives, but it's not clear what may have transpired in their conversation.

"It may have been a threat," Matchik said. "The explosion appears to be an intentional act."

Shaner and his teenage son, whose identity was not made public, were hospitalized after the explosion, which was felt by residents in the remote area for several miles around. Shaner's son has been released; Shaner is still in intensive care but is expected to survive.

The area remained closed off Wednesday afternoon. Residents will likely be able to come back in the evening. 

"The only thing I can state about the explosion itself was it was quite significant," Matchik said. "The true nature of that explosive device is yet to be determined, and that's going to take a significant analysis by the lab from the ATF to find out exactly what materials we're looking at or how that device may have been configured and how it was actually detonated."

The Cambria County coroner, Dennis Kwiatkowski, confirmed Kollar's death was ruled a suicide.

"It almost looked as if the house was a gas explosion at first," Kwiatkowski said of the scene Tuesday. "Then we found out there were other circumstances."

Clearfield Township, which is in Cambria County, is about 80 miles east of Pittsburgh.