September 10, 2023 - ChaddsFordLive.com

Cavalcante slips perimeter

_1JF4870-Bivens,-et-al — Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens, backed by representatives of federal and county law enforcement, addresses the press hours after learning Danleo Cavalcante had slipped through the perimeter of the search area around Longwood Gardens.

Convicted murderer Danelo Cavalcante eluded a police manhunt by somehow slipping through the search perimeter around Longwood Gardens, and then making his way to Phoenixville Saturday night in a stolen truck. According to state police Lt. Col. George Bivens, he tried to contact acquaintances in the Phoenixville and East Pikeland area but failed in the process. However, he remains at large.

Early Sunday morning press releases said Cavalcante stole a truck from Bailys Dairy in Pocopson sometime Saturday night. Bivens confirmed the theft and said the vehicle was unlocked and the keys were inside. He added that he believed the truck was later abandoned because it was low on fuel. Bivens also believes the escapee is still in that area.

Bailys Dairy is approximately three-quarters of a mile from the original perimeter near Longwood Gardens, but the theft was not known right away.

“The theft was not known until PSP canvassed the area looking for a possible stolen vehicle after a report of Cavalcante being sighted in the East Pikeland [Phoenixville] area,” Bivens said. “It was determined that Cavalcante used the van to travel to that area.”

While in the northern part of the county, Cavalcante tried to reach two former co-workers. At the first home, the individual didn’t answer the door. However, Cavalocante tried to talk with the person via the video doorbell, saying he wanted to meet with him, Bivens said.

“The individual was at dinner with his family and did not respond, and Cavalcante left,” Bivens said. “The homeowner eventually returned home, reviewed the doorbell recording, and called local police.”

He continued to say that PSP was not contacted about that phone call until after midnight. “This was our first indication that Cavalcante had been able to travel from the area of Longwood Gardens.”

Photos from a doorbell camera show Cavalcante with his altered appearance. The photos are from the home of the first person Cavalcante tried to contact at 9:52 p.m. He had managed to obtain some clothes —a green hoody in the stolen truck, and a baseball cap — and had somehow found a razor to shave and further alter his appearance.

Cavalcante, who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his girlfriend, made it to the home of another associate at 10:07 p.m.

“That associate was not home,” Bivens said, “but a female resident observed Cavalcante and called her friend. That friend responded to the resident and eventually placed a call to local police.”

That’s when PSP learned about Cavalcante possibly driving a white vehicle. That was at 2:30 a.m. At 5:20 a.m., they identified the vehicle as the stolen truck. They eventually found it in a field in East Nantmeal Township at 10:40 a.m.

“Investigators have been searching that area since that time,” Bivens said. “We’re very concerned that Cavalcante has or will attempt to steal another vehicle to facilitate his escape.”

“I know this is an extremely stressful time for the community. I assure you we are doing everything possible to bring this to a successful resolution as quickly as possible.”

Bivens, the deputy commissioner of operations for the state police, could not say for certain exactly how Cavalcante slipped through the perimeter that police had said was secure.

“No perimeter is ever 100 percent secure ever…I’m not going to make any excuses. I wish this had not happened. Unfortunately, there are a lot of circumstances, a lot of issues associated with that property.”

The heavily wooded area in and around Longwood contains a lot of drainage ditches and tunnels “things that that couldn’t have been secured” that Cavalcante could have used to break out of the containment area.

He added that they won’t know for sure how Cavalcante got by the perimeter until he is safely captured, and interviewed, and then tells how he managed to evade capture and flee the Longwood zone.

Prior to Cavalcante breaking through, Bivens was already going to increase the number of personnel involved in the manhunt from 400 to 600.

Cavalcante escaped from Chester County Prison on Thursday, Aug. 31 by crab-walking up two walls in the exercise area. While police want to recapture him without incident, Bivens said last week that deadly force is authorized if he does not surrender peacefully.

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.

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Cavalcante spotted in Phoenixville

Police

UPDATE from PSP Below

A press release from the Pennsylvania State Police at 5:31 a.m., Sept. 10.:

“On 09/09/23 during the late evening hours/overnight hours, it was reported that Danelo Cavalcante was seen in the northern Chester County area near Phoenixville. He changed his appearance. He is clean shaven and last seen wearing a yellow or green hooded sweatshirt, black baseball style hat, green prison pants, and white shoes. He is operating an unknown vehicle possibly white in color. If anyone has any information regarding to this update, please contact 911 or the Tip Line at 717-562-2987.”

UPDATE: “It is confirmed that Danelo Cavalcante is operating a 2020 White Ford Transit (van) bearing Pennsylvania registration ZST8818. The van has a refrigeration unit on the top. The vehicle is reported stolen by Baily’s Dairy. Law Enforcement agencies nationwide have been advised.”

End Update

Photos of Cavalcante:

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Rabbinic Reflection: I Am Not Ready

Religion Today

Untitled design - 1 — Rabbinic Reflection: I Am Not Ready

I am so not ready for the Jewish New Year. I wish I meant that I am still holding onto summer; after all, it has been hot enough. I also wish I meant that I need to menu plan, shop, and cook for Rosh Hashanah meals; that would not be true, though. No, what I mean is that all of the ritual tools meant to help me prepare spiritually have not worked.

For weeks now, I have followed the Jewish calendar’s countdown to year’s end. We had three weeks of admonition leading into Tisha B’Av, the day commemorating the destruction of both temples and many other calamities. Tisha B’Av was followed by seven weeks of consolation. During these latter weeks, we also began the Hebrew month of Elul during which the shofar is sounded each morning. The weeks of admonition and consolation refer to passages from the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah that are heavy on pathos, playing on our emotions. The shofar in Elul is an alarm calling us to attend to our misdeeds.

This year, though, the shofar was more of an alarm clock with a snooze button. I heard it, and I went back to what I was doing. It is not that I have been doing bad things and won’t stop. Rather, I have been doing “busy” things — work and family and life things all have a hectic pace full of the usual transitions from summer to school. In my push forward, I have not reflected on my actions or my relationships; I have not stopped to do the work the shofar calls me to do.

It is more like I heard the shofar sound, but I did not hear the sound of the shofar. The shofar does have a sound that is a straight call, the t’kiyah (blast). The next note is a sh’varim (broken), a blast broken into three waves. There is also the t’ru’ah (alarm), nine short staccato notes. Usually, when I listen to the shofar I feel the shift from call to wave to notes, sometimes I even feel the sound vibrate within me, too. Usually, the waves of brokenness bring me to a spiritual space where I consider what was or is hard in my life. After that, the alarm bells of the t’ru’ah come like the printing of a receipt for how I acted. When that all works, I come away reminded that the word shofar has the same root meaning as l’hi’shaper, to improve.

Is it too late to improve? Is it too late to enter the Jewish New Year spiritually prepared to return, to repent, and to atone? Rabbi Alan Lew in his book This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared writes, “A mindful awareness of our circumstances often makes things seem worse and not better…we may feel a sense of urgency, even of desperation, about our plight.”

He goes on to say that that urgent desperation “is the emotional basis of Selichot.” Selichot, a series of petitionary prayers, gets its own service the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah. Last night was Selichot. So, if the week leading into Rosh Hashanah is started by an urgent, desperate sense of needing to address our problems, then this year I am not not ready.

My not-readiness is an acknowledgment that Rosh Hashanah is a BIG deal. It is more than the culmination of all those rituals of the last many weeks. It is more than the start of a New Year. Rosh Hashanah is the birthday of the world, a celebration of all of existence, and an acknowledgment of both how big a role and how small a role we play in it. There have been times when I was ready, I was all too aware of life and death and living meaningfully. There have been other times when I did not know if I was ready or not, and the holiday itself guided me.

This year, as I enter not-ready, I know in a deeply spiritual way that to be human is to be unprepared. Not ready is real, and on Rosh Hashanah that will be enough. May the New Year be enough for all of us.

About Rabbi Jeremy Winaker

Rabbi Jeremy Winaker is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hillel Network, responsible for West Chester University, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and other area colleges. He is the former head of school at the Albert Einstein Academy in Wilmington and was the senior Jewish educator at the Kristol Hillel Center at the University of Delaware for four years. Rabbi Winaker lives in Delaware with his wife and three children.

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