"'They don't realize the danger"

Posted: Tuesday, January  31, 2012

Last week's stabbing and bludgeoning murders of two estranged spouses in Nockamixon caught the attention of Donna Byrne for reasons beyond the gruesomeness.

The deadly incident marked the seventh time in seven months in Bucks County where one spouse allegedly killed another. In five cases, the spouse also committed suicide, and with three, the person killed others, as well.

Lloyd Hill 

As executive director of Bucks County's domestic violence services agency, Byrne said she hasn't seen such a rash of murders since a six-month period in 2005 when four Bucks County women died at the hands of their husbands.

"It's just as bad now, and people don't realize
that," Byrne said. "They don't realize the danger from intimate partners."

In the most recent killings, Lloyd Hill, 41, of Haycock, is facing two first-degree murder charges in the deaths of his wife, Stefanie Hill, 36, and her live-in boyfriend, Frederick Tarantino, 43.

The Hills, who married in 2000, met Tarantino and his wife, Tara, through church and became friends.

At some point, Stefanie Hill and Frederick Tarantino became lovers, left their spouses and moved in together, police said. Lloyd Hill and Tara Tarantino also lived together, but that started years after their spouses got together. Neither couple is divorced from their spouses.

Court records show that in 2004, Lloyd Hill beat his wife and threatened to kill her after she told him she wanted to end their marriage. Lloyd later pleaded guilty to simple assault, a charge he has faced before in Bucks and Philadelphia counties, according to court records.

Stefanie Hill and Fred Tarantino did not seek a protection from abuse order against Lloyd Hill, authorities said.

But many other Bucks County residents are filing for PFAs through A Woman's Place, which has seen a dramatic increase in protection order filings since 2007, said Carol Gaughan, manager of legal advocacy for A Woman's Place.

In 2009 and 2010, A Woman's Place saw an 18 percent increase in protection from abuse filings over the previous fiscal year. The agency typically sees 600 to 700 PFA filings a year.

Byrne said the agency's counselors say the sputtering national economy has made it more difficult for an abused partner to leave a situation. Women are less inclined to leave an abuser during a recession because fewer outside resources are available and jobs are harder to find. Women who do leave often find themselves homeless.

One counselor told Byrne that she has clients who are living in cars with their children.

Another recent common and disturbing thread the agency sees is a greater level of violence against abused women, advocates said. Where years ago a woman would enter the shelter with a black eye, today women have a black eye, cigarette burns and missing teeth.

Some advocates suspect the weak economy, and the increased stress levels it causes, might explain both a rise in the level of violence and the number of cases in which criminal charges are filed along with legal protection orders in Bucks County.

What particularly worries Byrne is that many people don't recognize abusive behavior patterns before they become dangerous, and by the time they do, it can be too late.

Following the four murder-suicides in 2005, the Bucks County Domestic Violence Fatality Review
Commission was formed to review the deaths and identify system gaps as a way of preventing further domestic violence homicides in Bucks County.

Among the outcomes of the commission's 2008 report was a new lethality risk assessment tool for law enforcement that was implemented last year, Byrne said.

Dorleen Burklund 

When responding to domestic calls, police are told to look for a cluster of non-criminal behaviors that could be indicators of abuse and, where they see this pattern, make a greater effort to encourage a partner to seek outside domestic violence services.

But leaving an abusive situation itself doesn't guarantee safety, domestic violence experts say.

People are at the highest risk for harm after they leave an abuser, even if its weeks, months or years later. It doesn't matter if the abuser has moved on, started another relationship or filed for divorce, Byrne and others emphasized.

Often the triggering event occurs when a partner exercises independence, such as starting a new relationship, moving into a new home, securing a new job or seeking child custody.

"He could be married and have a new family, but there is still that control," Gaughan said. "It's still a pattern of control. It's like that quote, 'If I can't have you, no one will.'"

...............
Recent murder or murder-suicides involving spouses


June 17, 2011
Warrington resident Chris Moyer, 44, bludgeoned his wife, Irina,39, and 7-year-old son Dylan to death with a baseball bat, then drove to the Hatboro train line and committed suicide by train.

July 5, 2011
Richland resident Leroy Clymer, 92, shot to death his wife,Kathryn Clymer, 87, before turning the gun on himself. The Clymers were believed to be in poor health, according to authorities.

Aug. 27-28, 2011

Leonard John Egland

U.S. Army Capt. Leonard John Egland, 37, of Fort Lee, Va., was sought by Virginia law enforcement as a person of interest in the shooting deaths of his 36-year-old ex-wife, her boyfriend and her boyfriend's 10-year-old son. Sources said they may have been killed Aug. 27.
After killing the three, authorities believe Egland drove north with his young daughter to the 3400 block of Church School Road in Buckingham, where he shot and killed his ex-wife's mother, Barbara Ruehl, 66, as she sat in a chair, police said.
Egland brought his daughter into St. Luke's Hospital in Quakertown and told medical personnel to check her out. He later was found dead of a single gunshot wound and his body was found in a wooded area off York and Almshouse roads in Warwick.

Sept. 26, 2011
Police find the bodies of Jeanne Hoez, 90, and her husband,Charles, 92, dead in the bedroom of their Langhorne home. Police believe Charles strung a hose from the couple's minivan through their first-floor bedroom window and pumped deadly carbon monoxide into the home. Their son, who lives in Upper Bucks County, found them dead. Hoez had advanced Alzheimer's disease, a progressive illness that left her unable to respond to her environment.

Oct. 3, 2011
Springfield resident Dorleen Burklund, 49, is arrested and charged with murdering her husband of 20 years, Michael Burklund,47. The couple was estranged at the time of the incident.
Police say in the middle of an argument at their home in the 3200 block of Mink Road, Dorleen fatally shot Michael in the back multiple times; about one half hour after the shooting, she called 911 and confessed to the killing, police said. The couple had been in the process of getting a divorce, according to authorities.

Oct. 24, 2011
Quakertown resident Charles Christine, 88, shot his wife, Betty Jane Christine, 86, in the back of the head while she slept in their bed. Charles Christine then went into another room and turned the gun on himself.
The couple's daughter arrived to routinely check on her parents and found them dead.
Police believe the shootings likely happened sometime early in the morning Oct. 24. Neighbors said that Betty Jane had suffered from health problems, including chronic back pain, and took a lot of prescription pain medicine.

Source: Bucks County Courier Times

The gift of life is in your hands

Posted: Sunday, September 9, 2012

The last thing Robert Berue remembers before he died is sweeping freshly mowed grass clippings off the front porch of his Middletown home.

His third heart attack — which turned into cardiac arrest — happened on a sunny Saturday morning in June as some neighbors were outside on their lawns only a few doors away and unaware of what was happening.

That no one rushed to perform CPR before the paramedics arrived and revived him is something that doesn’t surprise Berue, who turned 50 in August.

After all, last year he watched his neighbor die in front of his house after he suffered cardiac arrest. As with Berue, the emergency medical responders performed CPR and revived his neighbor.

“I think a lot of people are scared of CPR,” Berue said.

That is true, said Dr. Gerald Wydro. He is regional medical director of Bucks County Emergency Health Services and one of the rescue workers who treated Berue at the scene of his cardiac arrest.

Historically, bystander-CPR rates in the northeastern United States have been “very, very” poor, despite a national effort by the American Heart Association to promote hands-only CPR over the traditional mouth-to-mouth version, he said.

Using hands-only CPR alone can double, even triple, the survival rate for a person who experiences an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, Wydro said. And it only takes five minutes to learn.

That’s why Wydro is starting a campaign to boost awareness of hands-only CPR.

As part of it, he hopes to get Bucks County government to consider participating in a free PulsePoint smartphone application that directs people to public areas where someone is experiencing a cardiac arrest so they can assist until rescue workers arrive. The app would have to be integrated into the county’s 911 emergency system, which could cost the county, he said.

Wydro is set to meet later this month with county officials, including the director of emergency management and the director of the county’s emergency radio room, to discuss the possibility of implementing the app here.

Cardiac arrest occurs when normal blood circulation stops because the heart doesn’t contract effectively. A heart attack can progress into cardiac arrest, a condition that kills about 350,000 U.S. adults a year, making it among the nation’s leading causes of death.

Two out of every three cardiac arrest deaths happen outside a hospital. Every minute a patient is in cardiac arrest, the chance of survival drops roughly 10 percent.

Bucks County rescue squads respond to an average of about 285 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest calls a year and about 15 percent of patients have a pulse rate returned by the time they arrive at the hospital, Wydro said. The county doesn’t collect data on how many of those patients survive and how many are discharged without brain damage.

“But without a doubt, those numbers are much lower than 15 percent,” he said.

A life in their hands

Bucks County has already taken steps to encourage bystander CPR. The Bucks County radio room dispatchers will tell people who call in a suspected cardiac emergency to perform hands-only resuscitation until rescue workers arrive.

“If they’re not in cardiac arrest, they’re going to push you away,” Wydro said.

He believes that a combination of better awareness of the hands-only CPR option and the PulsePoint smartphone app could boost survival rates here as it has in other areas where the app is available.

The app uses the GPS-capabilities in smartphones to link emergency medical dispatches with people near a cardiac arrest event. People who download the free app to their phone can be alerted when someone near them requires CPR.

Currently, four areas are “live” on PulsePoint: the San Ramon Valley, Alameda County and San Jose in California and Erlanger Kentucky, according to Rob Burne, PulsePoint’s chief executive officer.

San Jose is the largest U.S. city to utilize PulsePoint’s location-aware technology, which is available on both the iPhone and on Android-enabled phones. The San Jose Fire Department and the nearby El Camino Hospital partnered to bring the technology to the community.

The only cost associated with the app involved integrating the app technology into the existing 911 software, said Richard Price, fire chief for San Ramon Valley Fire Co., which has used the PulsePoint app since 2011. While he estimated that could cost up to $20,000, he said local sponsors, such as hospitals, may cover that cost.

At the moment, PulsePoint developers have no “hard facts” regarding app responders because it doesn’t track any information on the users, victims or their location, Burne said. But PulsePoint hopes that will change with a new app update that will add an anonymous follow-up survey on phones that have received a CPR alert, Burne said.

What Burne can say is that the app has been downloaded and installed by more than 25,000 individuals and it has issued 89 CPR alerts matching the criteria of a likely cardiac arrest in public locations with responders who have the app and close enough to assist.

San Jose Fire Department spokeswoman Capt. Mary Gutierrez said that the nearby San Ramon Valley Fire Department collects all information about the alerts and she has had been told they get “quite a few” citizens responding to calls almost every week.

“There are typically good Samaritans that are already on scene when the event occurs,” she said.

San Ramon Valley Fire Chief Price says the PulsePoint app has created a greater public interest in CPR and public access to automated external defibrillators. He said that 17,000 citizens in his area are now trained in hands-only CPR. Plus, the fire department is looking at doing one-minute training videos on hands-only CPR that will be featured on TV gas pumps.

And Price said he’s seeing more bystanders using the lifesaving skills.

Arriving emergency responders now find as many as six people at CPR alert locations, he said.

And where rescue workers once would find someone performing CPR at the scene only one-quarter of the time, they’ve found bystanders doing so 40 to 50 percent of the time over the last two years, he added.

PUC calls meeting with PECO, smart meter vendors

Sunday, September 9, 2012

PECO Energy now confirms that 26 of its newly installed smart meters have overheated since March, but says not all the incidents resulted in fires and only three resulted in property damage beyond the area surrounding the meter.

The electric company is also in the process of replacing about 13,000 digital meters that failed to install the first of two wireless safety upgrades, spokeswoman Cathy Engel Menendez said. The upgrade automatically shuts off electric service if a meter problem is detected.

That automatic shutoff was not installed on smart meters that caught fire last week in Middletown and Bensalem, Engel Menendez confirmed.

“With a wireless communication, it is expected that not all meters would be reached, that is why we had the plan in place to proactively replace any that did not receive the enhancement,” Engel Menendez said.

PECO’s smart meter program came under scrutiny last month after some Bucks County fire marshals raised concerns about newly installed smart electric meters overheating and causing house fires. After the safety concerns went public, PECO on Aug. 15 temporarily suspended installing new smart meters.

The situation caught the attention of the Public Utilities Commission, which recently directed PECO to answer questions regarding its handling of the smart meter program to determine if there were any code violations. PECO’s deadline for those answers was Friday.

Also Friday, the regulatory agency announced it has scheduled a public briefing Thursday in Harrisburg where PECO officials and its smart meter vendors will be asked to provide an update on what it’s doing to resolve the fire safety issues with the meters.

PECO replaced 186,000 residential meters with the new models in Bucks and Northeast Philadelphia when it became aware of a pattern of overheating problems and stopped installation of Sensus meters, the model that experienced the problems.

Currently about 201,642 smart meters are in operations, and all but 46,316 are the Sensus models, according to PECO.

In its response to the PUC, PECO contends the L&G and Sensus meter models for residential properties both passed a third-party testing program that focused on potential overheating of the meter’s internal remote connect / disconnect switch “without issues.”

“At no point in the process was PECO made aware of potential issues involving meter overheating,” according to its response.

But the overheating issues have persisted since the installations were suspended almost a month ago.

Middletown reported its first smart meter-related fire Sept. 4, which left minor fire damage to the exterior of a home on Sycamore Ridge Drive, Middletown Fire Marshal James McGuire said. The electric meter was replaced sometime in the spring, McGuire said.

Bensalem has reported three smart meter related fires since April — the most recent early Thursday on the 1800 block of Park Avenue. The home sustained minor damage, fire officials said. The meter had been replaced in late June or early July.

Similar fires involving smart meters have been reported in Bristol Township, Upper Makefield and Lower Makefield. In the Upper Makefield fire, it was determined a failed positive connection on the meter caused a fire last month.

Regulators in other states, including Illinois and Maryland, are also investigating allegations of dangerously overheating electric smart meters and reports of meter fires.

In its PUC response, PECO says preliminary investigation results found that more than half the meter overheating incidents involved pre-existing problems with customer equipment, installation or water intrusion issues. Investigations into 12 other overheating incidents are continuing.

PECO has retained two independent experts for additional forensic analysis and testing focused on evaluating meter performance, according to its PUC response. It has also replaced more than 30,000 Sensus meters with L&G models to determine if they perform differently.

A second remotely installed safety upgrade for Sensus meters began Thursday and it includes an early alarm signal to PECO if something wrong is detected in the electric meter. The upgrade should be completed by Sept. 12, Engel Menendez said.

PECO is required to replace the electric meters of its 1.6 million business and residential customers in the Philadelphia region and part of York County as part of a 2008 Pennsylvania energy efficiency law. The law requires all Pennsylvania utilities to update meter technology to encourage energy conservation.

Jo Ciavaglia: 215-949-4181; email jciavaglia@phillyburbs.com; twitter@jociavaglia

DA announces arrest in 2006 murder of Bristol Township man

Posted: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 

The first time Kevin Battista visited the once notorious drug markets of Bristol Township’s Bloomsdale section looking to score $60 worth of powder cocaine, he was shot to death in a robbery attempt, the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said.

Ckaron Handy (left) and Kevin Battista

Within weeks, Bristol Township police say they had a suspect — a convicted Philadelphia drug dealer named Ckaron Handy — but they didn’t have enough evidence to connect him to the crime.    

For more than five years, Battista’s murder — one of a half-dozen that occurred in the neighborhood between 2006 and 2007 — went unsolved.

Until Monday. That’s when police and prosecutors announced at a news conference that they had filed an arrest warrant for Handy, 24, charging him with murder, robbery and related offenses. The suspect turned 19 two days after police say he shot Battista to death in December 2006.

As it turned out, Battista’s case had connections with at least two other formerly unsolved murders that occurred around the same time in the Bloomsdale-Fleetwing area.

Handy is in federal custody, where he has been since last October while awaiting trial scheduled for next week on an unrelated federal gun possession charge, prosecutors said.

Only one of the 2006-2007 murders — Jimmy Dennis Moore, 19, of Bristol Township — remains unsolved.

“We just kept chipping away,” Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said during the Monday morning news conference at the Bristol Township municipal building to announce the charges. “You’ve got a much safer community these days than it was back then,” Heckler said.

Recently, the township installed 20 video cameras in the Bloomsdale neighborhood which has cut crime in half since March, police Chief James McAndrews added.

Battista’s is the second unsolved murder in which Bristol Township has made an arrest this year. In March, police arrested Michael “Pooh” Brooks, 27, of Willingboro, N.J., in the June 2007 murder of Daniel Buchanan, 33, of Bristol Township.

During the investigation, police learned that witnesses and players in the Buchanan murder, and the 2007 murder of Trenton resident Eric Doggett, were also connected with the Battista case. The three cases ended up with arrests after going before the Bucks County Grand Jury, where the connections were revealed, prosecutors said.

Battista, 30, who lived in the Appletree section of Levittown in the township, was found shot in the 5800 block of Fleetwing Drive shortly before 2:30 a.m. Dec. 7, 2006. Battista was a machinist who worked 12 hours a day to support his family, including two sons ages 6 and 9 at the time.

Bucks County prosecutor Jennifer Schorn described Battista as a recreational cocaine user who was in the neighborhood with a female friend looking to buy powdered cocaine, as well as looking for his longtime girlfriend and mother of his sons, who he thought he saw in the Bloomsdale neighborhood, according to a probable cause affidavit in the case.

After Battista failed to find his girlfriend, he turned his attention to scoring cocaine, police said.

But none of the street dealers would sell to him because they didn’t recognize Battista as a regular customer in the neighborhood. He also asked for powdered cocaine, not crack cocaine which was what was commonly sold in Bloomsdale, police said.

Those two things made the dealers think Battista was an undercover cop, according to a family member of Handy, who spoke with police, according to the affidavit.

Police say that Battista twice circled the block in his red pickup truck, when he saw five men on the corner of Airacobra and Mustang streets and stopped to ask if they had cocaine. Handy was one of the two men who approached the vehicle.

They asked Battista how much he wanted. Battista replied he had $60.

That is when police say Handy pulled out a gun and demanded the money.

“Are you kidding me?” Battista replied, according to court documents.

Handy then started counting to three, police said.

The woman passenger in the pickup told police that Battista put the truck in drive and pulled away slowly. As he took his foot off the brake, two or three shots were fired.

A wounded Battista — who was still holding the $60 in his hand — accelerated the truck. The woman told police that she ducked under the dashboard, according to court records.

Battista kept driving but eventually slumped on top of the woman passenger, police said. The woman tried to steer the truck but it hit a parked car.

The woman said she checked for a pulse and Battista was still alive but he was making choking noises. He was taken to Frankford Hospital, now Aria Health’s Torresdale campus in Philadelphia, where he died of the gunshot wound to the chest, according to an autopsy.

Less than a year after Battista’s murder, Handy was arrested on an unrelated drug charge and sentenced to state prison, where he remained until 2011. A few months after he was paroled, Handy was arrested on the federal firearms charge in Bristol Township, police said.

While police say there were witnesses to the shooting, as often happens in the neighborhood, they refused to come forward. In 2009, the Bucks County DA’s office took the case before a Bucks County grand jury to compel witnesses to testify. The jurors indicted Handy in 2010, but the presentment was not unsealed and filed until Monday for strategic reasons, according to the DA’s office.

Among those who testified before the grand jury that Handy was the gunman were witnesses in both the Buchanan and Doggett murders, prosecutors said.

Those witnesses including Omar Brooks — brother of accused Buchanan murderer Michael “Pooh” Brooks — and James Williams, 24, who pleaded guilty last November to voluntary manslaughter in connection with the April 27, 2007, murder of Doggett. Both men testified they were with Handy the night of Battista’s murder, according to court documents.

Omar Brooks told the grand jury that he was standing about 20 yards from Battista’s pickup truck when he was shot. After the shooting when Brooks caught up with Handy, he asked him why he was acting nervous.

“I just shot the dude in the truck,” Brooks said Handy responded, according to the affidavit.

Michael Brooks also was interviewed and testified that the day of the shooting James Williams and his brother Omar came to him worried that police would think they were involved in the Battista murder because they were nearby.

Brooks said that Omar told him he was there when the shooting happened and Handy might have “tried to rob the guy,” according to court documents.

Jo Ciavaglia: 215-949-4181; email: jciavaglia@phillyBurbs.com; Twitter: @jociavaglia

Police: local repairman stole and cashed homeowner's blank checks

Posted: Wednesday, October 3, 2012 

After a local repairman accepted a homeowner’s check for work he performed, Bristol Township police say he helped himself to a half-dozen blank checks that were cashed for more than $1,000.

Police say that William Cloak III, 33, of the Indian Creek section of Levittown, worked on the heating system of the victim’s Apricot Lane home between December 2011 and January 2012.

William Cloak III

In February, the woman reported to police that someone had cashed five of her checks, which had been stolen from her home. The checks were all made payable to Matthew Kutler, who the victim didn’t know.

During the police investigation, a sixth unauthorized check for $150 was discovered. That sixth check was made payable to another person she didn’t know — Donald Buscher.

All six checks ranged in amounts from $50 to $400, totaling $1,200, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Police working with security at the victim’s bank obtained photographs of Kutler cashing four of the victim’s checks, and Cloak and Buscher each cashing one check, according to the affidavit.

The victim identified Cloak from one of the photos as the heating repair man who did work at her home and Kutler as his helper on the job, police said.

In March, police spoke with Buscher, 30, who lives in Indian Creek. He confirmed that he had cashed a check that Cloak had given him, according to court documents.

A couple months later, Kutler, 20, of the Goldenridge section of Levittown, told police he had cashed five of the victim’s checks, which Cloak had filled out and given to him. Kutler told police that he endorsed the checks and split the proceeds with Cloak after cashing them, court documents said.

Buscher is scheduled for trial later this month on charges of forgery, access device crimes, identity theft and receiving stolen property related to the incident, according to online court records.

Kutler pleaded guilty in August to charges of access device unauthorized use, identity theft, theft and forgery and received two years probation.

Cloak was arraigned Tuesday before Bristol Township District Judge Robert Wagner Jr. on 37 felonies, including multiple counts of forgery, unauthorized access device use, and identity theft.

He was sent to Bucks County prison in lieu of 10 percent of $100,000.

Donald Buscher.

Jo Ciavaglia: 215-949-4181; email: jciavaglia@phillyBurbs.com; Twitter: @jociavaglia

Matthew Kutler 

Police: Men stripped vacant homes of 'hundreds' of pounds of copper, scrap metal

Posted: Thursday, October 4, 2012 

Two men broke into at least five Levittown houses last month and stole hundreds of pounds of copper piping and other scrap metal that they sold to buy drugs, Bristol Township police say.

The suspects -- Matthew Kutler, 20, whose last known address was in Bristol Township, and Michael Hancock, 23, of Ironwood Road in the township -- allegedly targeted houses that were abandoned or up for sale.

Matthew Kutler (left) and Michael Hancock

To get money, Kutler also took part in the stealing and cashing of six blank checks from another township homeowner. He pleaded guilty to that crime in August and was sentenced to two years of probation. Kutler and a local repairman, also charged in the check theft, had been hired to work on a heating system at the house, police said.

Between Sept. 4 and 12, Bristol Township police responded to a spree of burglary reports involving forced entry to homes on Appletree Drive, Mayflower Road, Grasspond Road, Petunia Road and Mintleaf Road.

In all five break-ins, police found that house piping, heating piping, baseboard heating fins, copper water pipes, heater parts and water valves had been roughly cut from heaters and pipes, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Also on Sept. 12, police responded to a complaint about a possible burglary-in-progress and arrested Hancock on theft and other charges. At the police station, Hancock admitted he and others were breaking into homes and “strip mining” metals in order to feed their heroin addictions, according to the affidavit.

Hancock said he developed his addition after he was injured and that he and  others -- usually Kutler -- would break into vacant homes and steal the metal, according to police. He admitted hitting homes in Mill Creek, Plumbridge and Goldenridge sections of Levittown. All the charges so far are for thefts in September.

Hancock said that they sold the scrap metal at a local scrap yard and used the money to buy drugs, police said.

At Hancock’s Ironwood Road home, police said that they found “hundreds” of pounds of copper and heating fins, which Hancock said was the scrap from a burglary he did the day before on Petunia Road.

A week later, police spoke with Kutler, who also admitted he was a heroin addict and had been breaking into homes with Hancock and stealing metal that they sold as scrap, police said. Kutler said that he and Hancock often worked together, but at times other people filled in for whoever wasn’t present.

He also told police that they never went into any occupied homes.

“Kutler explained that he felt bad, but was addicted to heroin that he snorted,” according to court documents.

Police also spoke with Cynthia Meaden, 20, who lives with Hancock, and she reportedly admitted that she supplied the men with the home addresses and sometimes dropped them off and picked them up after break-ins. She also admitted to being a heroin addict, police said. An arrest warrant for Meaden has been issued in connection with a Sept. 11 burglary, according to online court records.

The list of addresses that police found in Hancock’s car contained house numbers and also the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in each house. Meaden said that Kutler used a digital device to access a real estate “For Sale” listing site to find vacant houses in Levittown to break into and steal the metals, according to court documents.

Along with the home address list, police also found tools that were reported stolen, scrap yard receipts, pawn slips, hand cutting tools, and work gloves in Hancock’s car, court records show.

Kutler and Hancock were arraigned on 17 and 25 felonies, respectively, including five counts each of burglary Wednesday before Bristol Township District Judge Joanne Kline, who set their bails at 10 percent of $50,000 apiece, though both men were already incarcerated at Bucks County prison on other charges.

The two men are also awaiting a preliminary hearing scheduled for later this month before Kline on misdemeanor charges of prowling at night and possessing an instrument of crime with intent stemming from a Sept. 6 incident, according to online court records.

Jo Ciavaglia: 215-949-4181; email: jciavaglia@phillyBurbs.com; Twitter: @jociavaglia

The $14 million question: Who pays off Lower Bucks Hospital's loan

Posted: Sunday, September 2, 2012 

A $14 million question is looming over the pending sale of Lower Bucks Hospital to a for-profit health care system: Will Bucks County remain on the hook for the money it borrowed to help the hospital emerge from bankruptcy?

As of last week, county officials — including the head of the agency that owns the hospital — didn’t have firm answers.

“It is a very complicated situation that will have to be resolved before the (Bucks County Redevelopment) Authority board votes to approve the sale,” said Robert White, the authority’s director.

The $14 million bond is the result of an agreement between the county’s redevelopment authority and Lower Bucks Hospital to allow the hospital to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year. Under the agreement, the redevelopment authority would have to approve any sale of the Bristol Township hospital.

In 2010, the Bucks County commissioners approved the redevelopment authority borrowing the money by issuing bonds secured by the county and the hospital’s dedicated .05 percent from Pennsylvania table games revenue at Parx Casino in Bensalem, which is estimated to be $750,000 to $1 million a year.

Under the agreement, the redevelopment authority took title to the hospital property as collateral, and leased it back to Lower Bucks Hospital. In exchange, the hospital committed all its rights to future gaming revenue to pay the debt service on the bond.

The hospital agreed to repay the loan with interest over 20 years and buy back the property. The total amount the hospital promised to repay would be almost $30 million.

But now that the hospital is slated to be sold to Prime Healthcare Services, a California-based, for-profit chain of 18 mostly West Coast hospitals, some are wondering if the county will be stuck paying off a loan for the new for-profit owner.

White said that there are “no simple answers” to questions regarding the bond and its repayment with the pending sale. He added that the redevelopment authority has not received any “official” notification about a sale.

If the $14 million is not carried as a liability on the hospital’s balance sheet, then it is unclear as to how the debt would be satisfied, said Robert Hill, director of business and financial practices for Health Strategies & Solutions Inc., a Philadelphia-based national health care strategy consultant firm.

Lower Bucks Hospital CEO and President Albert Mezzaroba said that the new owner would not be responsible for the debt service on the loan.

“The short answer is no, there is nothing in the lease, or any other document that would require a new owner to ... pay the debt service,” he said.

Rather, Mezzaroba said the new owner would step into the current lease agreement that exists between Lower Bucks Hospital and the redevelopment authority; if the sale is approved, Prime Healthcare would have the same responsibilities as Lower Bucks Hospital including operating the property as a health care center.

Bucks County Commissioner Diane Marseglia expressed frustration at the lack of answers.

“I am mystified as to why (the commissioners) are in the dark,” she said.

She said her inquiries with county financial people confirm one possible scenario is that the county would be required to keep paying the bonds using the casino revenue until they reach maturity in 15 to 20 years.

The other scenario, Marseglia said, is that the new owner pays off the bond debt or agrees to pay off the bonds over the next 15 to 20 years from its profits.

If the new owner pays off the bond, the county could reap up to an additional $1 million a year in gaming revenue, Marseglia said.

That’s because Prime Healthcare is a for-profit group, which means it is not entitled to receive the table gaming revenue under state law. Instead, the money will go to the county.

If the bond is paid off at the time of the sale, the county could use the table game revenue for other purposes, such as to offset tax increase or make infrastructure repairs, Marseglia said. Otherwise, the county cannot use the gaming revenue until the bond is repaid.

Lower Bucks Hospital would be the second Pennsylvania hospital in Prime Healthcare’s growing portfolio; in February it bought the financially struggling Roxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia.

The company specializes in financially challenged hospitals that treat mostly low income patients and rely heavily on government reimbursement, according to published reports.

In January, Prime Healthcare Services was recognized one of the top 15 U.S. health systems by Thomson Reuters, a business data provider.

In formally announcing the sale last week, Lower Bucks Hospital said that as part of the sale agreement Prime Healthcare had agreed to a list of conditions, including:

• Maintain all services, including emergency departments.
• Provide access to a $3 million loan for working capital, with plans to invest up to $10 million for needed capital improvements.
• Hire all employees and maintain all collective bargaining agreements.
• Assume all health care contracts and liabilities.
• Provide the same level of charity care for indigent and low-income patients.

Pennsylvania regulators could require the new owners to fulfill those promises, too, said Health Strategies & Solutions’ Hill, who has worked on a number of hospital sales.

With hospital sales, the state will develop and impose a set of conditions on the buyer and monitor to make sure the conditions are adhered to, Hill said. That said, the employees could be terminated for cause and the new owner could request state permission to terminate a service.

Nonprofit community hospitals, such as Lower Bucks Hospital, generally have higher levels of charity care than for-profit hospitals because they offer a wider array of services, some of which require they accept low-income patients, Hill said.

Increasingly nonprofit hospitals are finding access to capital more difficult because of the challenging credit markets. nonprofits tend to run on tighter margins, which makes lenders more reluctant to approve loans, Hill said.

As a result, more for-profit health care groups, such as Healthcare Services — which has substantial capital reserves — are buying up nonprofit hospitals. The attraction for the for-profit groups is that a nonprofit hospital is still a money generator — and a good investment, Hill said.

Often for-profit health care companies will buy struggling hospitals, invest in infrastructure and services, and improve the economies of scale so they can buy things at better prices — then once the portfolio is in a good financial position, they sell them, Hill said. Typically the turnaround process is five to 10 years, he said.

The biggest downside to for-profits, Hill said, is that the organization likely doesn’t have that same community commitment and roots. Also there is a loss of local control of what many people consider a critical community asset.

For-profit owners might be more inclined to terminate select services that they deem unprofitable.