Philadelphia Inquirer - June 2006

Local News &
Summer break:
City politicians
try to get away
from it all. B3.
T U E SDAY, JU N E 2 7, 2 006
Hey, big spender!
Pizza at Tiffany’s
For more than a year, I’ve had a
note to self in my Palm Pilot to “check
on status of Tiffany @ A.C.”
Honestly, I kind of hoped the deal
would die. If/when the famed jeweler’s beautiful blue boxes started popping up in Atlantic City, I’d have to
stop making fun of the place.
Everyone knows once you have Tiffany & Co., you’ve arrived.
But in case anyone still doubts that
A.C. has gone from fanny packs to
Prada purses, the brains behind the
Pier at Caesars have given the girl
plenty of burly backup.
Gucci, Burberry, Hugo Boss and
Louis Vuitton will hawk their high-end
wares over the waves when the shopping center opens, literally, over the
Atlantic Ocean this week.
There’s even a chic boutique aimed
at the audience for whom the MTV
series My Super Sweet 16 is neither a
comedy nor horror show.
The store is called Trust Fund Baby.
And as a gesture to Jersey girls
with no credit limit, it will sell custom
couture T-shirts with “No Shoobies”
printed on the front.
Priceless.
Philadelphia
Fendi tackle boxes?
Ah, yes, the ocean — that big blue
bath doing its thing as the cash registers ring. At the Pier, the Atlantic acts
as both a natural attraction and class
unifier.
At the request of city officials, Gordon left the Pier’s first-level deck
open to the public for fishing.
Yes, fishing.
So while ladies-who-lunch nibble on
Ahi tuna upstairs at Buddakan,
sweaty men will be tossing chum into
the water below, angling for a bite.
Rarely has luxury shopping seemed
less exclusionary.
I mean, I’m more likely to shop at
Gymboree than Gucci, and the Pier
offers both — plus a water show being
hyped as the “World’s First Articulated Rain Curtain with four individually
controllable arcs,” each with over 90
degrees of movement.
I have no idea what that means, but
they tell me it’ll be bigger and better
than the Bellagio’s.
“When you have 35 million people
coming to a market, you have to appeal to everybody,” Gordon says. “We
want to give people a refuge from
their everyday life.”
So win big, spend big. Lose big, and
stuff your face with fuschia M&Ms
they don’t sell at home.
And during hurricane season, visitors now have a choice: Buy a Burberry raincoat and brave the storm, or
watch not one, but two water shows,
in style, indoors.
Contact Monica Yant Kinney at
856-779-3914 or [email protected].
Read her recent work at
http://go.philly.com/yantkinney.
B
the Region
The Philadelphia Inquirer
B
WWW.PHILLY.CO M
Rash of shootings
stuns Wynnefield
By Robert Moran
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Algie Dennis was awakened by a latenight phone call from his brother Anthony.
“Al, I think something happened to A.J.,”
his brother said, referring to Dennis’ son.
“You better get up here.”
Lying on the blacktop playground of William B. Mann Elementary School in Wynnefield was a young man with a bullet wound
to his head. Police let Algie Dennis into
the taped-off crime scene — and he knew.
“That’s my son,” Dennis said.
Algie Jeremy Dennis, 19, a student at
Millersville University in Lancaster County, was killed May 26 while playing dice
with friends against the wall of the school
at 54th and Berks Streets.
Since May in this section of Wynnefield,
a neighborhood where prosperity is struggling to fend off creeping urban decay,
See NEIGHBORHOOD on B4
MICHAEL BRYANT / Inquirer Staff Photographer
Brothers Mike and Nate Smith (right) stand at 56th and Diamond
Streets in Wynnefield, site of a recent gun battle. Since May, there
have been five shootings with four victims in the neighborhood.
Ali guilty,
mentally
ill in fatal
beating
He was convicted of killing a
medical student in 2004. A
hearing will determine what
psychiatric help is needed.
You got that, where?
Scott Gordon didn’t plan on giving
Atlantic City a second look.
Gordon’s company built shopping
meccas such as the Beverly Center in
Los Angeles and the Forum Shops in
Las Vegas — yes, the mall with the
aquarium and talking statues.
In the late 1990s, a Caesars exec
asked Gordon to take a look at A.C.
“We came out and we didn’t see the
opportunity,” Gordon told me. “There
just wasn’t enough happening from a
non-gaming perspective.”
That’s a charitable way of saying
that at the time, cheesy T-shirt stands
on the Boardwalk were just about the
only shopping to be found.
Five years later, in 2002, another
Caesars boss urged Gordon to give
Atlantic City another look.
By then, the town was crawling with
construction crews. The Quarter and
the Walk were both in development.
The Borgata was rising like a phoenix
from a landfill.
Gordon was sold, and promptly began planning an un-mall: 500,000
square-feet of fun, built atop an historic pier jutting 900 feet into the sea.
On the first floor, he’s built a permanent sand castle, installed a Brazilian
epay wood boardwalk and tempted kids
with “It’s Sugar,” a store that lets you
create your own candy bar. On the second, it’s high fashion for high rollers.
Gordon swears it didn’t take much
to persuade luxury retailers to set up
shop in the land of flip-flops.
Shopping and gambling, he points
out, are both about numbers. Atlantic
City and Las Vegas attract about the
same number of visitors a year, but
the people who come to A.C. actually
have a higher income.
“The opportunity here is even more
exciting than Las Vegas,” he insists.
Why, I ask? “The ocean.”
SECTION
By Robert Moran
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
CLEM MURRAY / Inquirer Staff Photographer
With red dots marking bullet wounds, Charles Turner plays a teenage patient as Temple Hospital staffer
Scott Charles and trauma chief Amy Goldberg explain to the students the failed efforts to save his life.
After the
trigger is pulled
At an ER and
a morgue,
students see
the results
of violence.
Third in the series
T
By Susan Snyder
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
uesday, March 14 — In a lecture room at Temple University
Hospital, a color slide flashes on the screen: It’s a close-up
of a throat slashed open, the windpipe still visible in the
bloody scene.
Cynthia Vega, 13, whose eighth-grade class is studying violence and
writing about it in diaries, looks down and begins to cry and rock in
her seat.
“You OK, baby?” asks Temple
staffer Scott Charles.
Writing for
Their Lives
In a bold project, a
class of Philadelphia
eighth graders
explored the violence
and pain in their
world through
shared diaries,
revealing their
feelings and fears in
a transforming
experience. In a
five-part series, The
Inquirer chronicles
their six-month
journey.
Sobering Trip
“It could be me in
that freezer at a
young age.” B6
Cynthia nods but does not look up.
She is thinking of her 20-year-old cousin, shot in the neck two months earlier. He can barely speak now.
A classmate turns around in his seat
and hands her a tissue.
Charles continues: “I don’t care how
many memorials you get, how many
spray-painted murals they put in your
name, this can’t really be worth it, can
it?”
Less than two weeks after sharing
poignant diary entries about their absent fathers, the “Freedom Writers” of
Grover Washington Jr. Middle School
are seeing the blood-and-guts aftermath of violence.
“I wanted them to get a better perspective on the finality — or the desperate reality — that occurs when things
turn from a little conflict into guns so
quickly,” explained their eighth-grade
teacher, Michael Galbraith.
He also planned to have them meet
a genocide survivor from Sudan and
read about the Holocaust.
See DIARY on B6
After deliberating for less than two
hours, a Common Pleas Court jury
yesterday found Nader Ali guilty but
mentally ill in the public beating
death of medical student Lea Sullivan on South Street in 2004.
Ali, 28, wearing an untucked dress
shirt, showed no emotion as the jury
foreman announced the verdict at
4:59 p.m. at the Criminal Justice Center.
The 28-year-old Franklin Lakes,
N.J., man faces life in prison for firstdegree murder. But first, he will get a
hearing in September to determine
what psychiatric treatment he might
need.
“I’m fully satisfied with this verdict,” prosecutor Edward McCann
said afterward.
McCann said “it was clear” that
Ali’s mental state contributed to the
brutal afternoon attack outside the
Whole Foods Market at Ninth and
South Streets on Nov. 7, 2004.
Ali, wearing a ski mask, approached Sullivan, 25, a third-year
student at Jefferson Medical College,
from behind and hit her repeatedly
with a Louisville Slugger baseball
bat. She died the next day.
Ali was a former classmate of Sullivan’s and was on medical leave at the
time of the murder. During the trial,
doctors said Ali was mentally ill with
schizoaffective disorder-bipolar type.
The illness can be controlled with
medication.
See VERDICT on B6
Inside
Prison sentence: A music
teacher gets up to 67 years
for sexually assaulting five
girls. B3.
Tangie Smith and Jelissa Jones (right)
react to a graphic slide show
depicting injured and dead patients.
ONLINE EXTRA
For multimedia shows of Cynthia
Vega and other eighth graders, as
well as their teacher, talking about
how the diary project changed the
class, go to
http://go.philly.com/writing
New commissioner: Patrick
C. O’Donnell is tapped to
complete an unexpired
term in Chesco. B2.
Growing up: New Jersey is
the nation’s seventh-best
place to raise children, a
study finds. B4.
John Grogan’s column appears
Mondays and Fridays.
Once dropouts, students in the YouthBuild program are graduates today.
A chance to return to academics — and to life
By Martha Woodall
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Craig Green had a baby on the way.
Dominique Bryant, a young mom,
already was a widow.
Faced with these daunting, real-life
motivations, Green and Bryant did
something their families had been
pleading for them to do for years:
They returned to school.
Today, Green, and Bryant and 106
other former dropouts will graduate
from YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School with high school diplomas
and job skills they learned through
hands-on experience, including re-
habbing and building homes for lowincome families.
“Everything was done by students,” said a beaming Green, 19, last
week as he and Bryant led a tour of
one of the four houses YouthBuild
students had built in Point Breeze
through a partnership with Universal
Community Homes.
“This is just awesome,” Bryant, 21,
said. “I can’t believe we did this in 10
months.”
YouthBuild Philadelphia is one of
the flagships in a national YouthBuild network of more than 225 proSee BUILDING on B7
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B6 B
www.philly.com
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
W R I T I N G
F O R
T H E I R
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Metropolitan Area News in Brief
L I V E S
1 dead, 1 wounded in West Oak Lane shooting
A shooting early yesterday morning in West Oak Lane left
one man dead and another critically injured, said Officer
Beth Skala, a police spokeswoman.
The shooting at 21st Street and Stenton Avenue happened
about 1:10 a.m. when police responded and found both men
shot multiple times, Skala said. One man, believed to be in
his 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene at 1:25 a.m. after
being shot several times in the chest, Skala said.
A 21-year-old man was taken to Albert Einstein Medical
Center, where he remained in critical condition with gunshot
wounds to the chest, a leg and an arm. Police did not
release names, pending confirmation of their identities. No
arrests have been made. Anyone with information is asked
to call homicide detectives at 215-686-3334. — Barbara Boyer
Pa. House Democrats push for vote on minimum wage
CLEM MURRAY / Inquirer Staff Photographer
Cynthia Vega tries to regain her composure after running out of the morgue at Temple University Hospital during a visit by Michael
Galbraith’s eighth-grade class. She was thinking of a 20-year-old cousin who was shot in the neck not long before the Temple visit.
After the
trigger is pulled
DIARY from B1
geon, Amy Goldberg, tells the
Knowing Someone
Cynthia, who had been abstudents. She directs them to
sent a lot — stomachaches and Shot or Killed
feel their pulse. Some touch
headaches, she says — had Of 28 eighth graders who
their wrists; others their
raced for the bus this morning, responded to an Inquirer survey, necks.
determined to make the trip. 13 indicated that they had a
“Unfortunately, what we had
Her stepmother forgot to set friend and/or relative who had
to do with no anesthesia, we
her alarm, she explains. Her been shot or killed.
had to go between the rib spacdad, who works in a hat factoes and open up his chest.”
ry, couldn’t give her a ride.
She picks up a steel contrapShe is grappling to undertion used to crank open a rib
stand violence. Not only had
cage. At that, Heather Rodriguher cousin been shot, a friend
ez, 13, bolts from the room. A
of hers had killed himself. And
classmate, ashen and wobbly,
while she lives in a close-knit
follows her.
Olney neighborhood where
“Could he feel it when you
her stepmother is a block capwere cutting his stomach?”
tain, she worries.
asks Long Nguyen, 14.
In February, she’d written:
“You hope they can’t,” Gold“My mom kisses me goodberg responds. “We can’t give
night and every night I pray for
them any medication because
my life. … In my culture when
that drops their blood pressure.”
a young lady turns 15 she’ll
Goldberg lifts a white body
have a sweet 15 to introduce SOURCE: An Inquirer survey of Michael
bag. “That night, Lamont
them to womanhood, but I’m Galbraith’s eighth-grade class at Grover
didn’t make it.”
not sure if I’ll make it. … But Washington Jr. Middle School
In the morgue, as Charles
I’m still glad that I’m alive for
points out eight refrigerators
MIKE PLACENTRA / Inquirer Staff Artist
now with my beloved friends
with “almost always someone
and family.
in there,” Cynthia again is hit
Charles, Temple’s outreach
by thoughts of her cousin and
ABOUT THE SERIES
and trauma coordinator, consteps into the hall, crying.
For six months, The Inquirer
tinues his slide show.
“That could have been him.
followed the “Freedom
Click. A man shot in the
It was this close,” she says,
Writers” diary project at
heart, his chest ripped open.
holding her thumb and forefinGrover Washington Jr.
“This is what disputes look
ger a slit apart.
Middle School, sitting in on
like to us,” Charles says.
Not wanting to miss anything,
the class’ biweekly diary
Click. A victim with an openshe soon goes back to find
readings, traveling along on
ing in his gut, where a colostoCharles handing out labels like
field trips, and visiting
my bag will be attached.
those tied on the toes of corpses.
students at home. Quotes
“I don’t know how gangsta
“Write down on your toe tag
from diaries were used with
you were before that, but it’s
the people whose hearts are
parents’ permission.
kind of hard to be gangsta like
going to be broken over and
that with a bag full of poop,”
over again if something hapCharles says.
pens to you,” he tells the class.
Click. The last three slides: a smiling child,
“Keep writing until you run out of names.”
the boy a bit older, then as a teen. “This is
Cynthia, who has seven siblings and step-sibLamont Adams,” Charles says.
lings and lots of cousins, aunts and uncles, fills
both sides of her tag.
He tells how the North Philadelphia 16-yearold sat down to dinner on Sept. 22, 2004, and,
Seeing her busily writing, Charles asks what
predicting his own death, scribbled his obituary
her family would remember about her.
on a napkin. “Twenty-four hours later, Lamont
Cynthia thinks for a moment.
Adams was brought to this hospital.”
“All the songs me and my sister dance to,”
The students, somber and silent, troop to the
she says. “And all my favorite movies. They’re
ER, where Charles asks one of them to lie on
going to think of me every time.”
the treatment table. Cynthia watches closely as
Charles tells students to keep the tags to reCharles pastes 23 red stickers on the boy, for
member what’s at stake.
each place a bullet entered or left Adams’ body.
“God knows,” Charles says, “this girl back
“This is what the surgeons saw, the night they
here definitely has a lot of people who love her.”
brought Lamont in,” Charles says.
The strapping six-footer wasn’t breathing and
Contact staff writer Susan Snyder at 215-854-4693 or
didn’t have a pulse, Temple’s chief trauma [email protected].
The classmates enter
the hospital
morgue. Teacher
Michael Galbraith
said he wanted the
students “to get a
better perspective
on the finality — or
the desperate reality
— that occurs when
things turn from a
little conflict into
guns so quickly.”
Notes from the
house of the
dead: ‘It could be
me in that freezer’
On March 30, Michael
Galbraith’s students read
aloud what they’d written
about their visit to the ER
and the morgue.
Naibria Reid:
“Most of all, I see my
classmates listening … so focused and sad looking that
it made me think that they
realize that it could be them
that’s in that cold freezer forgotten about. … I felt sad. I
felt sympathy, and it just
made me realize that I
should not take things for
granted because it could be
me in that freezer at a
young age. …
“When I am about to
make a wrong decision … I
will think about all these
young men and women who
have been killed. I know people don’t want to live like
this, so say no to the wrong
crowd.”
¢
David Leal, “Reality’s
House.” “I’m going to visit a
house, a Temple house
where many people who
hear its name may shiver, a
house where country borders don’t exist, but where
three borders only exist.
You cross one border, and
then you must wait to be
sentenced to the next border. … I visit the house and
as I walk through it, I feel
the intensity of people wandering the halls, probably
thinking they’ll never leave
the cold house and see their
families. …
The two owners of the
house don’t ever sleep.
They’re always awake 24/7.
They can’t be seen, but you
can feel them when you’re
about to cross.
Galbraith asks: “Are the
two owners of the house
life and death?”
“Yes,” David responds.
“That’s good,” Galbraith
says. “That’s the kind of
thing you need to read
twice.”
— Susan Snyder
Tomorrow: At a peace rally in
May, Naibria Reid
identifies with a
murdered woman.
HARRISBURG — State House Democratic leaders said
yesterday they would push for a final vote this week on
raising Pennsylvania’s minimum wage but would not try to
hold up approval of a state budget if the effort failed.
The House and Senate have passed differing versions of
legislation that would raise the $5.15-an-hour minimum wage
by $2 next year. The Senate bill contains an exemption that
would let some small businesses put off paying $7.15 an
hour until July 1, 2008. Though House Democrats prefer the
House bill, they can accept the Senate version as a
compromise, Minority Leader H. William DeWeese (D.,
Greene) said.
Democrats intend to try parliamentary maneuvers to force
a vote this week if Republicans refuse to consider the bill,
said Minority Whip Michael R. Veon (D., Beaver). The
Democrats will not insist on a minimum-wage vote as a
condition for passing the state budget for the fiscal year
that begins Saturday, DeWeese said.
Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Majority Leader Sam
Smith (R., Jefferson), said GOP leaders had not discussed
the Senate measure and would have to evaluate it.
— AP
N.J. Senate votes to limit protesting military funerals
TRENTON — New Jersey has moved closer to becoming
the 12th state to adopt a law limiting funeral protests at
services for soldiers killed in combat.
The Senate voted 37-0 yesterday to approve the bill. The
Assembly voted earlier this month to approve it.
Assemblyman Jack Conners (D., Burlington) introduced
the bill after a Kansas church group began protesting
funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. The Westboro Baptist
Church contends the deaths are God’s vengeance for
American homosexuality.
The bill would restrict protests to within 500 feet of
funerals and make it a disorderly persons offense to protest
within an hour before to an hour after a funeral. Such
offenses are punishable by up to 18 months in jail and
$1,000 in fines. President Bush recently signed a bill curbing
pickets at national cemeteries.
— AP
Senate acts to require all prescriptions to be filled
TRENTON — A pharmacy would have to fill prescriptions
for any drug it stocks, regardless of a pharmacist’s moral
beliefs, and would have to refer patients to other places if it
didn’t stock the item, under a bill approved, 31-6, yesterday
by the Senate.
Pharmacy boards in Wyoming, Nevada, North Carolina and
Massachusetts have said pharmacists don’t have a right to
refuse prescriptions for moral reasons. The issue typically
involves contraceptives.
The bill approved by the Senate would require pharmacies
to locate without delay another pharmacy and transfer the
prescription to it if it doesn’t stock the drug.
The Assembly hasn’t considered the bill.
— AP
WWII Merchant Mariners can apply for a cash bonus
HARRISBURG — Honorably discharged Merchant Marine
World War II veterans eligible for a one-time, $500 cash
bonus can now apply for the money, the Pennsylvania
Department of Military and Veterans Affairs said yesterday.
To be eligible for the Pennsylvania Merchant Marine
World War II Veterans Bonus, a U.S. Merchant Marine
veteran must have served on active duty, including training,
between Dec. 7, 1941, and Aug. 15, 1945; have a DD Form
214 evidencing honorable service; be a legal resident of
Pennsylvania as of April 12; and submit an application
(DMVA-MM-Form 1) through the applicant’s county director
of veterans’ affairs.
If a veteran is unable to apply in person due to health
reasons, a representative who is a legal guardian, an
attorney-in-fact as documented by an appropriate power of
attorney, or a spouse not separated from the veteran, may
apply. Applications must be submitted by Dec. 31.
— Inquirer staff
Dogs in Chesco cruelty case to be put up for adoption
The dogs surrendered by Oxford dog breeder Michael Wolf
following his animal cruelty conviction will be available for
adoption at the Chester County SPCA offices starting at 11
a.m. Thursday.
Chuck McDevitt, SPCA spokesman, said that 65 cavalier
King Charles spaniels and 25 papillons, two of four dog
breeds seized during a raid by humane officers Feb. 10, will
be released to new owners once they are spayed or
neutered.
The animal shelter is on 1212 Phoenixville Pike in West
Chester. The fee is $100. English bulldogs and havanese
owned by Wolf will be available later, McDevitt said.
Wolf, 65, once a star handler on the dog-show circuit,
pleaded guilty June 19 to 60 counts of animal cruelty for
subjecting 333 dogs, three cats and two birds to filthy
conditions at his Lower Oxford Township facility.
— Bonnie L. Cook
Ali found guilty, mentally ill
in beating of medical student
VERDICT from B1
fied that Ali believed that Ari
Ali, through his lawyers, had HaKadosh, a 16th-century Kabpleaded not guilty by reason of balistic sage, had possessed
insanity.
Sullivan and forced him to do
John Elbert, his attorney, ar- battle. Ali was a student of Kabgued that Ali did not
balah, an aspect of
know right from
Jewish mysticism.
wrong when he fatalOutside the courtly beat Sullivan, a
house, the Sullivan
graduate of Radnor
family thanked everyHigh School and Harone associated with
vard University.
the police investigaAli had numerous
tion and prosecution,
hospitalizations for
especially the witpsychiatric
probnesses.
lems.
Melissa Idoni had
While waiting for
testified that after
the jury before its de- Nader Ali faces
the attack, Ali
liberation and after- life in prison for
“ripped off his mask
ward, Ali whispered first-degree
and stared directly at
at length to Elbert. murder.
me with a huge grin
When the jurors enon his face.”
tered Courtroom 902,
Ali was arrested in
Ali stared straight ahead and New Jersey the day after the
never looked at them, except attack.
when ordered to by Judge
Renee Cardwell Hughes for the Contact staff writer Robert Moran
verdict.
at 215-854-5983 or
A forensic psychiatrist testi- [email protected].
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