‘No new information:’ Philly sheriff mum 15 months after a guy with a poodle wrecked an office SUV

Fifteen months after a Ford Expedition assigned to a top deputy in the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office blew a red light in West Philly and caused a four-car wreck, promises of accountability have given way to a deafening silence.

Who was the guy in the tank top barreling down Cedar Avenue in the SUV that Saturday morning in August 2024?

Why did he flee the scene carrying what witnesses described as a beige poodle?

And is it just a coincidence that the deputy who later reported that the city-leased Expedition had been stolen has a dog that looks suspiciously similar to the one at the crash scene?

When The Inquirer first reported on the ordeal in April 2025, Sheriff Rochelle Bilal said she would get to the bottom of it.

She is no longer discussing it. Nor is the police department. Or anyone in City Hall.

“There is no new information I can provide at this time,” Bilal spokesperson Teresa Lundy said in an email Monday.

The case was unusual from the beginning.

Three days after the Aug. 10, 2024, crash, police responded to a report of a car theft at an address on Osage Avenue that matches the home address of Inspector Nicole J. Nobles, a top deputy in the sheriff’s office who leads its warrant unit.

But the police report, as The Inquirer later reported, described the complainant as an unknown female, even though police directives for investigating stolen vehicles instruct officers to request a complainant’s license, registration, and insurance.

“The individual making the report is listed as a Jane Doe,” a police spokesperson said in April, using law enforcement terminology for a victim whose name is unknown or concealed.

On top of that, Bilal’s office did not report the incident to the city’s fleet services department, as required for all city-leased vehicles, until five months later, in January 2025.

Outside law enforcement officials who reviewed the case at The Inquirer’s request said the sheriff’s office’s response has turned a one-day story into a monthslong caper in an already troubled department.

“The cover-up is always worse than the crime,” said Michael Chitwood Jr., a former Philadelphia police lieutenant who now serves as sheriff in Volusia County, Fla. “Just come out with it and say, ‘Hey, we screwed up.’”

Chitwood, who has also served as police chief in Daytona Beach, Fla., and Shawnee, Okla., said Bilal has an obligation to disclose what happened because the Expedition was leased by the city.

“You’re talking about a taxpayer asset, so not only are you telling the taxpayers, pardon my vernacular, ‘[Expletive] you,’ but … what else are you not sharing with the public?” Chitwood asked. “The message you’re sending to your employees is, ‘We’ll cover up anything.’”

Chris Burbank, the former chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department, agreed.

“Oh, man, this is just bad,” said Burbank, an adviser to the Center for Policing Equity who has worked on police reform initiatives. “It snowballs into: ‘Does the sheriff know the truth? Is the sheriff lying about it?’”

The underlying facts of the case are not disputed.

Early on a Saturday morning two summers ago, a Ford Expedition used by the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office was traveling through West Philly at a high rate of speed, with red-and-blue emergency lights and siren activated.

The SUV then blew through a red light and was T-boned by a Ford Fusion that had the green, careering into a parked Ford F-150 belonging to the city’s sanitation department, which in turn struck a parked Buick LaCrosse.

In the immediate aftermath, witnesses say, the corner of 57th and Cedar looked like the set of an Allstate Insurance commercial. Mayhem.

The Expedition was totaled, with estimated damages of $38,444.60, according to city maintenance records. Two of the other vehicles had to be towed away.

“I was like, ‘Is this a cop?‘” one Cedar Avenue resident, who was startled awake by the chain-reaction crash, wondered of the Expedition’s driver. “Then, I see him jump out with a dog.”

Witnesses said a young man in a white tank top — notably, not a sheriff’s deputy — emerged from the SUV carrying what appeared to be a brown or light-colored poodle.

The pair fled the scene together. Police failed to promptly investigate the crash, and no charges were filed. Left behind are a whole lot of unanswered questions.

Bilal said in April that she had taken “immediate action” three months before when she first learned that “no one within her chain of command had reported the incident” to fleet services as required.

The sheriff has since gone silent and will not answer any questions about the case, including why the theft was apparently reported to police anonymously or whether the SUV was driven by someone with access to Nobles’ keys.

Nobles did not respond Monday to requests for comment. A dog that appeared to be a beige poodle came to the door when a reporter visited her home in April.

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a police spokesperson, said the theft investigation remains “open” but declined to say whether police have made any progress — or have even been able to interview Nobles or any members of her family.

He did not have an explanation for why Nobles was not identified in the initial stolen-vehicle report.

Sharon Gallagher, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Managing Director’s Office, which oversees the city’s fleet services department, declined to comment on the case this week.

In the meantime, another sheriff’s deputy recently had her take-home vehicle stolen. The unmarked Dodge Charger, also equipped with emergency lights and a siren, was last seen in late September, parked on the 500 block of South 63rd Street.

Lundy, Bilal’s spokesperson, declined to comment on that case as well.

Andrew McGinley, vice president of external affairs at the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia good-government group, said he would encourage the city and the sheriff’s office to be forthcoming with the results of their investigations.

The Committee of Seventy and the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, Philadelphia’s fiscal watchdog, have been calling for the abolition of the sheriff’s office, which operates its own internal slush fund and has struggled in recent years to process property sales and provide courthouse security.

“Incidents like this are too common,” McGinley said, “and the mismanagement of this office continues to embarrass the city, weaken faith in government, and waste taxpayer money.”