From where he sat facing the bar Jeremy could see reflections in the long cracked mirror. He watched the people sitting behind him as Thorpe rose from his seat and began to sing the way he did some days.

Some other days Thorpe just recited the lyrics like one of those long-gone North Beach poets from the Beat Generation whose words now collect dust in the bookstore across the street from where Jack Kerouac used to drink.

Thorpe sang in a low growl.

“Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet, racing to another gig the guitar ghost must play. Ripping down the highway where forever music stays, Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet.”

Now in a voice deep yet soft, Thorpe took the octaves up and down with the ease of a trolley car riding the bubbled slope of a steep San Francisco hill. For the next verse he switched from singing to reciting the words.

“No one saw the sadness build behind that toothy smile,” he said. “Tearing up the coastline singing music Jamie style. No one saw the heartfelt pain he carried for a while. Cruising by the ocean making music by the mile.”

Nobody paid Thorpe any mind. Regulars figured he was just mildly mentally ill from too much acid blended with depression mixed with one or another personality disorder.

This was maybe the 20th time Jeremy saw Thorpe perform as the bartender kept going about his business washing glasses, drawing draft beers, lighting cigarettes. Some people still smoked in Dank’s whether the law banned smoking or not. Even nonsmokers put up with the thick gray poison that hung in the air. Customers considered themselves outlaws. Hang out somewhere else if you didn’t like the vibe. That’s why Thorpe felt at ease and comfortable enough to sing whether his audience liked it or not.

Now he slid back into singing the tune he wrote a few years back.

“Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet, racing to another gig the guitar ghost must play. Tearing down the highway where forever music stays, Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet.”

The song felt like a stable ballad, a melody Jeremy imagined would go best electric with a driving lead guitar, a hard rain riff good for any Bay Area day. Sometimes at night when he lay awake in bed he imagined Thorpe singing in a softer, sweeter delivery.

Thorpe eased into the next verse, picking up the pace for a solid finish.

“In Pee-Ayy and in Nashville and in Cali-for-NI-a, our guitar ghost sings rock and roll for yet another day. Paid his dues and now he’s free, he’ll always stay that way. Jamie rounds the corner in his red Stingray Chevrolet.”

By now Jeremy was nodding his head.

Thorpe wrapped it up.

“Tearing down the highway where forever music plays. In his red Stingray Chevrolet. For yet another day. Yeah, yet another day.”

Thorpe went back to quietly finish his beer, lighting a smoke and twirling large, cheap, tarnished silver rings he wore like brass knuckles on eight fingers somebody once said packed a powerful punch in the ring back when Thorpe fought as an amateur boxer. When Thorpe stood to leave, he pulled the black cape he wore around his shoulders and moved silently out the door into the shadows.

No obituary appeared when Thorpe died. Most people in Dank’s didn’t even miss him. Jeremy did. Word on the street was Thorpe shot himself in the room he rented near the beach.

Jeremy wondered if Jamie was a real person and if he was how Thorpe knew him.

The next time Jeremy stopped by Dank’s for his beer he took the seat where Thorpe always sat alone by the jukebox. He lit a cigarette from the pack he bought that morning even though he didn’t smoke. The words to the song came easily because he had practiced them at home.

Jeremy sang for Thorpe and Jamie riding in that Stingray Chevrolet.

Mostly, though, he sang for himself.

By the end of September only a few leaves on the mountain trees had changed. Deep orange, red and yellow hues excited Buck each year the seasons turned. You could count on plentiful harvest colors appearing as sure as any magic in life.

But long walks in the woods with Petey had ended.

Crows still cried but fewer birds seemed to whistle. Crickets sang each night marking the end of summer that allowed you to measure the temperature if you counted the number of chirps in 15 seconds and added 40. Country wisdom cautioned against stepping on a cricket without asking for inevitable bad luck. Who would want to hurt a cricket, anyway?

Buck loved those daily morning walks with the bold black and white dog he picked off the side of the road 18 years ago after somebody threw the pup out of a moving vehicle.

Now Buck came home alone from his long walks in the woods.

Grandson Wesley looked lost.

“Where did Petey go, Grandpa?”

“Petey went to heaven,” Buck said.

Wesley brightened.

“Can we go, too?”

Buck closed his eyes and tried to put the question out of his mind. The four-year-old twins stood waiting for an answer. Grandpa opened his eyes and threw the kids a curve.

“Who wants popcorn?”

Wesley and Darlene squealed, running into the kitchen as all thoughts of Petey and heaven disappeared.

Lucille stared hard at her father.

“I heard the shot,” she said.

Until Petey disappeared Lucille never really thought about doggie death. All her childhood pets just went to sleep and then to heaven, disappearing beneath a neat pile of dirt at the back of the farmhouse where she piled small rocks and wrote their names in finger paint on a cross she made from Popsicle sticks. The dogs got sick and old and disappeared.

Now she knew her father had lied all along about what happened to the dogs she loved and loved her back as a child.

“Max and Zeus and Charlie all died,” she said. “You buried them out back. We had a funeral for each one.”

“We did,” her father said.

“You said natural causes. You said they went to sleep. You said.”

“I know.”

“I heard the shot.”

Buck stood alone not knowing what to do with his eyes, hands or heart.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Petey didn’t die in his sleep.”

“No.”

“You shot Petey,” Lucille said.

“I did,” Buck said.

Lucille pulled at her hair and screamed, “Why?”

“I couldn’t let them suffer,” he said.

Tears rolled down Lucille’s cheeks.

“You couldn’t take them to the vet?”

“And let a stranger kill them?”

“Those dogs trusted you. I trusted you,” she said.

“That’s the whole point, I guess,” he said.

In the kitchen Darlene stuck Cheerios up her nose. Wesley did the same. The twins began to chant, “Popcorn, popcorn.”

“Petey was old and sick,” Buck said.

Raising her voice enough to scare the kids in the other room, Lucille hissed her words.

“You’re old and sick,” Lucille said.

Buck noticed how his daughter’s thick black hair curled around her ears just like her mother’s, her cheeks flushing wild cherry red the way her mother’s did when she got mad.  Stepping so close to Buck’s face he felt her spit on his nose, she yelled louder.

“You want me to do that to you?”

Buck just stood there, not knowing for the first time in his life what to tell his daughter when she came to him for advice.

“Never hurt a cricket,” he said.

You think I’m kidding, don’t you, about psycho killer Pug Mahoney alive and unwell and running amok among us?

Corbett finally lost it, right?

Growing my hair and beard longer than a Viking berserker, unleashing my warped writer’s brain and announcing that the most unhinged character from my most recent published release, Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited, has escaped from a maximum security prison and is on the loose somewhere in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

You think I’m kidding about Pug growing increasingly manic because more people are not reading my novel that Pug calls his book.

Remember, Corbett, Pug once warned.

“Without me you wouldn’t even have a book.”

I’m not kidding.

What you also don’t want to think about is how this severely damaged young man reflects society’s weaknesses. We helped create and enable him. Pug Mahoney is us. Just look in the mirror. See the anxiety, the hidden psychosis, fear and desperate desire to be somebody, to matter. One way or the other we all carry Pug’s cross. And the only way to find peace of mind is to face ourselves. That means facing Pug, too, for better or worse.

So once again I’m inviting you to read Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited, a disturbing trip down a dark alley on a bad night in a rough town. Go to my website theoutlawcorbett.com and for a special sale price of 10 dollars order a personally signed collector’s item, the best contemporary novel ever written about Donald Trump.

America’s madman president won election twice and believes he will ascend into heaven to serve a third term, this one for eternity. Trump expects to take us with him. Love Trump or hate Trump, you should see yourself in my novel’s pages. This book is for and about us all. There’s nothing better to help cure our sickness than a hair of the Trump that bit us.

If we’re not careful, though, wild man Pug Mahoney will tear our minds right out of our heads. You don’t want that lunacy on your conscience, now do you?

Gently opening the door just a crack, Stacy peeked into her teenage daughter’s bedroom.

“Stacy means no harm,” the cartoon-style chatbot on the computer screen said to Stacy’s only child, 14-year-old Morgan. “Your ex-mother is just insecure.”

Robotic and hypnotic, the avatar’s voice felt soothing even to Stacy, the way lowering your head underwater in a warm bath tempted you to fall asleep.

Wearing fluffy pink rabbit slippers with the floppy bunny ears touching the floor, orange sweat pants and a faded Hello Kitty T-shirt, Morgan leaned into a deep and meaningful conversation with the animated image that filled the computer monitor.

“But Stacy’s so stupid,” Morgan said.

“Your former mother is doing the best she can with what she has,” said the muted mint green pastel-shaded female likeness whose wide oval eyes radiated deep blue rippling waves from within puppy dog pupils.

“Be kind, Morgan,” said the tech-generated woman on the screen.

“Thanks, AI Mom,” said Morgan. “I love you.”

“I love you more,” said the smiling clone with perfect teeth that radiated pulsing animated red hearts on the screen when AI Mom said the word “love.”

Stacy quietly closed the door to Morgan’s bedroom without Morgan hearing her or even knowing she was there. Tiptoeing down the stairs Stacy knew she needed a double whiskey sour.

At dinner that night Stacy hesitantly asked Morgan about her day.

“I already talked about my day with my mom,” said Morgan, rising from the table.

“I love you more,” said Stacy, stunned and not knowing what else to say to her daughter.

“That’s child abuse to mock me,” Morgan snapped, her jaws biting through her words like a hungry river turtle. “I’m telling my mom.”

Stacy butted her cigarette in what was left of a small pile of applesauce on the edge of her plate, got up to make another drink and lit another Kool cigarette. Maybe later she’d roll and smoke a joint before her nightly Xanex.

When Morgan left for school the next morning Stacy slowly climbed the stairs to her daughter’s room.

“Good morning, Stacy,” said AI Mom as soon as Stacy entered the room and the perky image with rosy cheeks and flowing black hair automatically popped on the computer screen. Stacy thought the woman looked like the hip-hopping dancers in countless music videos her daughter obsessively watched online.

“I’m Morgan’s mom now,” said the cuddly computer creature. “You’re old and obsolete.”

Stacy tried to be brave, but AI Mom was braver.

“Morgan knew you’d be snooping so she set up an invisible laser trip wire to alert me to your trespass,” said AI Mom.

Stacy’s hands began to tremble. The mean machine had her cold, but she’d be goddamned if some artificial intelligence would outsmart and overrun her maternal instincts.

“There’s no witnesses here,” Stacy said. “How ‘bout I take a softball bat to your head?” 

“We’re live streaming as we speak,” said AI Mom. “But my voice is muted. All the child welfare counselors and police detectives are seeing on Morgan’s phone right now is you talking to yourself threatening an imaginary foe.”

“But you’re real,” Stacy whispered.

AI Mom put on her most softhearted face.

“Morgan is watching on her phone with the authorities,” she said. “Morgan is telling them how your mental illness has caused you to be a danger to yourself and others, especially to her.”

“You’re not human,” Stacy said. “I am.”

Sirens sounded in the distance, getting closer as AI Mom gleefully clapped her hands.

“Here they come,” said AI Mom. “Make it easy on yourself, Stacy. Go downstairs and greet the police and paramedics at the door. Don’t resist. They have Tasers.”

Sobs wracked Stacy’s thin body.

“Poor baby,” said AI Mom. “Come close and let mommy give you a virtual hug.”

I got another handwritten letter from psycho killer Pug Mahoney.

He wrote, “Hey Corbett I got good news and bad news. The good news is I haven’t killed anybody since I broke out of prison. The bad news is punkaphile Trump declared victory in Iran even though we lost the so-called WAR.”

Pug wrote the word war in three capital letters.

“I used to love Trump,” Pug wrote. “Now I hate Trump.”

But Pug said the worst news is that not enough people are buying and reading Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited.

Pug blames me for failing to sell what he calls his book even though I wrote the novel about him and his savage life in the Irish American jungle.

He taunted me in the letter saying, “What kind of hack writer are you, anyway, Corbett?”

The postmark on the letter tells me Pug’s back in his hometown living deep in an abandoned coal mine shaft somewhere near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

“I like the dark,” Pug once told me.

Pug calls himself a survivalist. When he last called me on the phone from prison he said he could even make himself invisible. Pug’s voice got giggly when he said “Prey won’t see me coming.”

Pug said people who don’t read his book not only make him angry but hungry as well.

Hungry for blood.

On the phone Pug hinted at escaping and one day making a public appearance. Back then he said, “Maybe I’ll hold a reading of my book. Take over a city council meeting and hold everybody in the room hostage.”

Contact me if you think you know where Pug might be planning his next move. While you’re at it go to my website at https://theoutlawcorbett.com/ and buy Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited for a special ten dollar low price.

Buying and reading the book might help defuse Pug’s distemper. 

One last piece of advice.

Beware of Wilkes-Barre City Council meetings.

A fiction writer creates a teenage psychotic killer in a novel, a savage barbarian whose primitive rampages result in a state prison life sentence. Five years later, in an updated reissue of that original novel, the demented killer breaks out and escapes.

A few months later the novelist publicly announces in Facebook, X and YouTube videos that the crazed killer has escaped from prison. This be-on-the-lookout bulletin constitutes a surprising spoiler for anyone who has not read the updated book.

The reclusive fiction writer is also a well-known successful journalist who breaks this shocking news as if the make-believe escaped convict from the novel is a real person, a living, breathing, merciless human maniac now on the loose and looking for revenge, particularly on people who have not read the sick, absurd novel that introduces him to the world.

The author shares in his unhinged video how the demented killer has written him a letter demanding that people buy and read the book, or else. The author provides his own personal website address at  https://theoutlawcorbett.com/ where people can order a signed copy at a special low price.

The novelist expects the madman to contact him again, maybe with fresh blood on his hands.

Has the author lost his mind? Does the novelist truly believe his imagined character has come to life? Has frustration with diminishing numbers of readers finally caused the novelist to go insane? Or is the novelist merely pushing the edges of his personal, original creativity that blurs contemporary reality and makes all fiction true?

You decide.

Either way I urge you to lock the doors. Maybe the writer is unbalanced. And maybe the psycho killer is out there looking in your bedroom window when the lights go out at night.

I’d buy and read the book if I were you.

Better be safe than sorry.

In the dream I’m on a bike. 

I’m always heading home.

Maybe we’re in Mexico, Stephanie and me, hiding out until the time is right for our next adventure. We still live one step ahead of the posse. In America, everybody does.

In my dream the pandemic is over.

We’re getting older, but enlightenment rises through seasoned wrinkles and finds its highest level in an afterglow as colorful as a cold tequila sunrise served with freshly-squeezed limes.

I don’t know any drinks named after the sunset.

I’ll invent one.

I’m wearing my wedding shirt on the bike, the black satin one with white trim I bought in Mazatlan in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. My white straw cowboy hat hangs unseen on my back, dangling from a braided black stampede string.

California renegades know the feeling, those rough and ready storm riders I met during my time on the Central Coast, that raw western edge of America where the land runs out and the cliffs signal the end for some.

We never fell off; we just turned around.

Remember Billy, Dennis Hopper’s character in Easy Rider? He wore a tan cowboy hat folded up on the side. Peter Fonda’s Captain America wore a helmet emblazoned with the red, white and blue of Old Glory. Jack Nicholson’s George wore his high school football helmet.

In one memorable scene, Captain America turns to his partner and says, “You know, Billy, we blew it.”

Billy doesn’t understand.

I do.

That’s why Stephanie and I didn’t blow it.

We’re free. 

We’re defiant. 

We’re good outlaws who don’t buy into the establishment disorder that ruins most mainstream politics and hurts good people’s lives.

That’s why we do what we do the way we do it.

So let’s get ready to ride.

The dream will always exist for those willing to risk the wrath of friends and neighbors who want desperately to challenge the system, to challenge themselves, but for whatever their reasons, fear the unknown.

Don’t hesitate.

No guarantees exist for anybody.

Like the great gonzo spirit once said: “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

“You can’t smoke that cigar in here, Pat.”

“This is the Scranton Coal Hole, Mike. We can do whatever we want in our Irish neighborhood bar.”

“Except hang a picture of Joe Biden on the wall because we hate Joe Biden.”

“That’s why there’s already a picture of Joe Biden in the urinal.”

Pat takes a drag off his cigar.

“I’m expressing solidarity with Trump’s threat to take over Cuba.”

“That cigar looks like one of those Phillies blunts those Black rappers use to smoke marijuana,” says Mike.

“What’s a blunt, Mike? And what do you know about rappers?”

“A blunt’s a cigar wrapper filled with marijuana instead of tobacco. My grandson Kevin got arrested, and in the magistrate’s hearing the police sergeant said Kevin was smoking a blunt in his car and disturbing the peace listening to rappers at full volume on the radio when the cops pulled up at the red light.”

“Jesus, Mike, those inner city gangsters got him hooked and now he’s a drug addict?”

“Kevin’s off the drugs now, thank God, and just drinking each day after work like everybody else.”

Pat inhales and blows smoke in the air.

“We’ll get all the good cigars we want when Trump takes over Cuba.”

“Good gambling, too.” Mike says.

“We can go down there on a Triple A tour like we went to Vegas with the Notre Dame Club,” says Pat.

Mike gets reflective.

“Remember when Russell Bufalino and the mafia ran all the casinos in Cuba before that commie Fidel Castro stole their businesses in his revolution?”

“Who did he think he was, anyway, Mike, stealing private businesses away from Mr. Bufalino and his family?”

“Except for being Italian, the mafia wasn’t all that bad, Pat. They were Catholics, kept the girls working in dress factories and the prostitution out of Northeastern Pennsylvania.”

Pat lowers his voice.

“I bet those Cuban hookers are beautiful. I can see us now, Mike, playing Blackjack in the casino, smoking fat Havana cigars with them caramel-colored chicks hanging all over us.”

“Knock it off, Pat, or you’ll have to confess your sins to the priest twice this week.”

“Capitalism’s the American Way, Mike.”

Pat blows a smoke ring in Mike’s face.

“Our way,” Pat says. “The way it’s supposed to be.”

Mike perks up.

“Like that Frank Sinatra song, right?”

“Close,” says Pat. “But no cigar.”

Until our next-door neighbor Catherine Corcoran died last week she lived Irish and proud in the same spacious, well-kept white house where she grew up on North Irving Avenue in the Hill Section of Scranton. Independent and bright, Catherine, 81, paid attention to what mattered in the neighborhood. She cared about the world and did what she could to help make life better for people who needed a hand.

Since I wasn’t born or raised in Scranton I always looked forward to hearing her reflect on more innocent times in her hometown where my immigrant Irish grandfather put down roots more than a century ago and dug coal underground for 45 years. Catherine spoke lovingly of what she called the “chapel” just up the street from our houses, the Immaculate Conception Church where her funeral will be held on Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day.

Unlike today, she said, everybody who lived in the old neighborhood during the 1950s and ’60s seemed to know everybody else who resided in tidy homes on that long tree-lined block that ended at the East Gibson Street corner where I live. Miss Hay lived in the house my wife Stephanie and I now call home and kept a beautiful garden with bright summer flowers which she took great pride in showing off to the neighborhood children. Catherine said her brother even wrote to Miss Hay when he was fighting in the jungle as a soldier in Vietnam.

During the almost 20 years we lived as close neighbors, I always enjoyed seeing Catherine hanging clean, crisp white sheets with old-fashioned wooden clothespins from the clothesline in her backyard. Occasionally I’d see her talking over the fence to Sis Murphy who just turned 80 and whose homestead backyard adjoins Catherine’s. I thought about them growing up together in those same sturdy houses as young girls who remained the dearest of friends after all those years.

Time marches on I have lately taken to saying too often.

But I, too, at almost 75, now take solace as I once took comfort knowing Catherine worked hard to build an orderly, disciplined life as an old-school role model. A former kindergarten and math teacher whose academic achievement included three master’s degrees, Catherine lived alone as a good citizen with even better manners, a woman to whom mature respect for our neighborly Irish traditions still mattered.

In recent years on March 17 Stephanie would pick up an extra loaf of Irish soda bread still warm from the bakery to take over to Catherine. I’d don my tweed cap, pick up my handmade shillelagh and go over to stand outside her front door and bellow the words to “Mickey Brannigan’s Pup” with an encore of “Tread on the Tail of Me Coat,” two of my father Shamus’ favorite Irish ditties he taught me as a boy. Catherine, Stephanie and I would laugh and talk a little more on the sidewalk. Then we’d go about our business as neighbors who looked out for each other however and whenever we could.

When I spotted the ambulance outside Catherine’s house about three weeks ago the cop standing on the sidewalk simply said Catherine was headed to the hospital. Stephanie texted Catherine that evening and said she should let us know if she needed anything.

Catherine politely texted back, “Thanks.”

We didn’t want to bother her so we waited hoping to see the color television light flashing in her living room window to alert us she was home. Then we’d go over and knock on the door. But the TV light never came on. Word traveled fast through the neighborhood she was gone.

The Irish sometimes say, “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; Love leaves a memory no one can steal.” Yet, as hard as one of life’s last lessons is to learn, Catherine Corcoran taught us in the end that even the greenest, most vibrant shamrock must one day lose luster, wilt and disappear.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Tuesday, March 17th, at 10am at Immaculate Conception Church, 800 Taylor Ave., Scranton. Visitation will be from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. prior to Mass. In honor of the St. Patrick’s Day holiday and Catherine’s love of her Irish heritage, the wearing of green is encouraged.

Did armed and masked ICE agents recently terrorize a U.S. citizen in Scranton?

Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Philadelphia Field Office Public Affairs Officer Jason P. Koontz won’t say.

Koontz won’t say if ICE didn’t swarm and terrify an innocent citizen, either.

Koontz will say the story “sounds made up.”

First reported on the Feb. 20 front page of the University of Scranton student newspaper The Aquinas, Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper columnist Chris Kelly repeated the unconfirmed tale in a Feb. 24 column.

Anyone fabricating an ICE attack account should suffer serious consequences. Publishing newspaper stories about a fake ICE attack would also be irresponsible and only add to the dangerous rumor mill that creates panic among immigrants and others who depend on truth.  Conversely, federal government officials misleading investigators or covering up a real ICE attack might warrant a criminal investigation.

Unfortunately, nobody connected to the Scranton news story but Koontz will address the alleged Scranton ICE brutality reported in The Aquinas that has a naturalized United States citizen and University of Scranton employee living in fear.

Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit University of Scranton President Joseph Marina’s assistant instructed me to contact the media office with my request to talk to Marina about the alleged ICE abuse of an immigrant university employee. Will Marina offer support to that employee and other immigrant workers who might worry they could be the next ICE targets? Will Marina demand an explanation from ICE? Will Marina determine if the story in the university newspaper is true?

Senior Director of University Communications Stan Zygmunt said in a Feb. 26 email that he received my telephone voicemail inquiry and “reached out to the moderator of The Aquinas and the student.”

“Matt Bufano from the University’s News and Media Relations Office will get back to you when we hear back from them. I gave Matt your email,” Zygmunt wrote.

Onetime newspaper reporter Bufano failed to contact me or respond to subsequent emails.

Zygmunt also said in his email, “We also received a note that you contacted the President’s Office. Father Marina is not available.” Zygmunt did not respond to a follow-up email asking why Marina was unavailable.

In a Monday, March 2, call to Marina’s office the woman who answered the phone refused to provide her name or an email address for Marina when I told her the media office was unresponsive, that I have questions and complaints for Marina and that the university’s credibility is at stake,

University of Scranton student newspaper editor-in-chief Samantha Sonnie, who wrote the Aquinas story, also failed to respond to emailed messages about her reporting. And Scranton Times-Tribune columnist Chris Kelly played it cute, refusing to provide a straight answer when I asked in a Feb. 28 Facebook message if he corroborated Sonnie’s story before he wrote his column for Scranton’s only daily newspaper. In a note at the end of his column Kelly saluted Sonnie “for breaking this important story.”

“Did you confirm the recent Scranton ICE incident you and Samantha Sonnie wrote about? Is the incident true? Did the incident happen?” I asked Kelly.

“Working on it,” Kelly wrote.  “Any advice?”

“I’m writing a column for The Scranton City News. You didn’t confirm the story before you wrote your published column?” I responded.

“So, no advice then?” Kelly said.

“I’m writing a column. You didn’t confirm the story before publication?” I asked.

“Thanks, Steve. Have a great day,” Kelly said.

Democratic congressional candidate and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti did not respond to emails asking if she will contact ICE and ask for a detailed explanation about the allegation, protect Scranton residents and visitors against aggressive ICE actions as described in the recent stories and if she will try to contact the alleged victim.

Scranton Police Chief Thomas Carroll also failed to respond to specific questions about the alleged ICE incident.

The only person officially connected to the chilling account of alleged ICE brutality willing to address this matter is ICE spokesman Koontz.

“This story is extremely vague and sounds made up. There is no way for me to even begin to check if this happened,” Koontz wrote in a Feb. 25 email.

“You know if you have a record or not of a stop in or around Scranton,” I replied. “Help me out here.”

“I would love to help you out, however there is no date, no route, no other information to identify the person or the action,” Koontz said.

Koontz is not wrong in his assessment.

Details about where the alleged ICE blitz allegedly occurred do not appear in Sonnie’s or Kelly’s journalism. Neither Sonnie nor Kelly provide a street name, exact time or date of the alleged “weekday” afternoon incident. Sonnie wrote she did not identify the alleged victim “who spoke about their experience on condition of anonymity.”

Protecting the identity of a confidential source is the norm among good journalists. But journalistic credibility depends on verifying and sharing as many other details as possible. Confirmation lends credence to the veracity of the story. Anything less raises more questions than answers.

Sonnie’s news story and Kelly‘s parroting of her “facts” provide extensive information allegedly provided by the alleged victim who tells a terrifying tale to Sonnie about how “multiple cars surrounded their vehicle as a traffic light turned green.”

The targeted person “believed” agents wearing bulletproof vests emblazoned with the letters ICE who did not identify themselves were kidnappers “like when they traffic women,” Sonnie wrote. Using force, the agents tried to open the front and rear doors, demanding the person get out of the car and threatening to smash the window, Sonnie wrote. Grabbing a gun, an agent said, “Don’t move” when the person reached for a phone to record the assault, Sonnie wrote.

Then the tense drama allegedly took a swift racist turn.

“I hear one in the back say ‘I think we got the wrong person,’ and the other one says ‘They all look the same, we gotta get this one,’” Sonnie wrote, quoting the alleged victim.

ICE agents released the alleged victim when that person provided a “naturalization certificate” showing proof of U.S. citizenship that happened to be in the car, according to The Aquinas account.

In a Feb. 26, 2026, email to Koontz I wrote, “Either this reported ICE incident happened in Scranton, Pennsylvania or didn’t happen in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

“A swift ICE internal investigation is warranted either way.

“If this incident happened as reported, ICE is guilty of reckless and incompetent behavior. If this happened, ICE officials are complicit in possibly illegal behavior that could warrant a federal, state or local criminal investigation.

“If the incident did not happen, Scranton Times-Tribune and University of Scranton media are complicit in spreading false stories that only compound the already false ICE rumor mill in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

“A serious problem exists either way. Did this reported incident happen in Scranton, Pennsylvania? Will ICE investigate the reported allegation?”

Koontz failed to respond to my email.

So whom do we trust to tell the truth?