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Tyler Wade gets promotion to New York Yankees

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Hazleton Area’s Sal Biasi signs with Royals

<p>A charity event marred by a couple allegedly having sex in public in full view of hundreds of people, including children!</p><p>Unfortunately, it happened just a few evenings ago in our fair city, according to police and witnesses.</p><p>More unfortunately, the alleged disgusting act at Kirby Park was just the latest of what&#8217;s now been a long line of alarming incidents over the last few weeks.</p><p>And it&#8217;s all becoming a black eye for not only Wilkes-Barre, but the whole Wyoming Valley.</p><p>First, though, we&#8217;ll get to the mind-boggling incident at the park last Thursday during the Young Professionals Kickball Tournament, put on by the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber&#8217;s Young Professionals Network.</p><p>As nine teams and roughly 100 players participated in the games &#8212; all to raise money for the YMCA children&#8217;s summer camp at Camp Kresge &#8212; an amorous couple on a grassy hillside above the fields became more and more noticeable.</p><p>A young professional who was there said the couple&#8217;s &#8212; um, let&#8217;s call them &#8220;movements&#8221; &#8212; left no doubt as to what they were doing, and this went on for more than a half-hour before police arrived to drag away the pair in handcuffs.</p><p>&#8220;It was like a train wreck,&#8221; said the witness we spoke with, who tried to describe what was happening in the classiest way possible. &#8220;You didn&#8217;t want to look, but at the same time people couldn&#8217;t help but look,&#8221; she added.</p><p>This young woman said her kickball team basically tanked its last game because what was happening on the not-so-distant hillside had hijacked everyone&#8217;s attention. And it&#8217;s a shame, too, because we&#8217;ve met some of these young professionals at a recent event, and they are good people looking to make a difference.</p><p>We will spare you some of the details police released, but a department Facebook post identified the suspects as Jacqueline Getz, 31, Edwardsville, and Kyle McClure, 29, Wilkes-Barre. Hey, Kyle and Jackie, if you are being charged unfairly, we&#8217;d love to hear your side of the story.</p><p>Regardless of guilt or innoncence, this park outrage simply served as a cap to what&#8217;s been a wild last few weeks.</p><p>The incidents are too many in number to lay out in this space, so we&#8217;ll go over a few highlights &#8212; or perhaps lowlights is the better term &#8212; from Wilkes-Barre recently:</p><p>&#8226; Two Saturday nights ago, three instances of gunplay were reported within city limits in an eight-hour span. Two people were wounded.</p><p>&#8226; Early last week, a body with stab wounds was found in an abandoned house on South Franklin Street. Since then, the victim has been identified as Ramon Torres. Police say his alleged killer, Sean &#8220;Juice&#8221; Talmadge, refused to leave until he could ensure Torres was dead.</p><p>&#8226; Late last week on Virginia Drive, a guy stopped to check on someone he thought he may have bumped with his vehicle, only to be stabbed for his trouble, officers say. That suspect was caught after a brief chase.</p><p>&#8226; Finally, in nearby Wilkes-Barre Township, an alleged thief with a reputation for robbing dollar stores nationwide was kind enough to pay a visit, according to police. The accused robber, dubbed the &#8220;Grandpa Bandit,&#8221; was caught in Indiana shortly after targeting the township&#8217;s Dollar General store, authorities reported.</p><p>Can this spree of lawlessness be blamed on the warm weather or is it just coincidental? Whatever the case, we are well-aware of the many good people, engaged civic groups, and community-minded businesses in the Wyoming Valley who are just as dismayed as we are.</p><p>Our only hope is that we&#8217;ve maxed out on the lunacy. Otherwise, it&#8217;s going to be a long summer for everybody.</p><p style="text-align: right;"><em>&#8212; Times Leader</em></p><style>
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Our view: Kickball incident a black eye