Philadelphia Inquirer - June 2006
Transcription
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 PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor 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]. PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor