Friday Follies...
Holy Frijoles, Batman...another weekend?
SO SOON?
Well, disappointed as we ALL are, it IS...another weekend.
Get out the "Honey-Dew" lists, and fire up the lawnmowers.
And while we're at it...
Let's get stepping into the dog piles of life, and see what sticks to the bottom of the old boots, shall we?
Caution...it might not be all sunshine and lollipops today.
** As an update from yesterday's story about the car that hit 4 people and killed 3 children, I have two articles to share from my old stomping grounds:
((Four deaths bring neighborhood closer
By Kristen A. Graham and Kia Gregory
Inquirer Staff Writers
It was a warm night, and a watchful adult was outside, sitting on a step with her baby.
Otherwise, 6-year-old Aaliyah Griffin never would have been allowed to play outside her Feltonville rowhouse.
Two doors down, Gina Marie Rosario, 7, begged her mother to play with the new neighbor girl. Aaliyah had a jump rope, and Gina wanted to teach her a game.
And then, before anyone could react, a silver Pontiac streaked down Third Street.
It plowed into the four and came to rest wedged between a house and a utility pole.
"There was no time to scream," said Abby Aponte, who saw the appalling Wednesday night scene unfold. "It happened too fast."
The two girls and the baby, Remedy Smith, who would have been a year old today, were pronounced dead shortly after the 7:30 crash. The baby's mother, Latoya Smith, 22, died at Albert Einstein Medical Center yesterday morning.
A day after the crash, jagged splinters still jutted from the pole the Pontiac had struck. The steps where the bigger girls had played were shattered and askew, with flecks of blood and grease apparent. A memorial grew on the sidewalk: teddy bears, lit candles with holy pictures stuck in them, a Phillie Phanatic, a Barney doll, messages scrawled to those lost.
Her hands shaking, Sandra Elias, Gina's grandmother, stood among the swell of relatives,
friends, and strangers who gathered at the memorial. Just before the accident, Gina and her mother, Elias' daughter Tammy Rosario, were ready to take a walk to a pharmacy to pick up medicine. But Gina had seen Aaliyah, and she coaxed her mother into waiting just a little longer so she could play.
Suddenly, there was a screech of tires and a crash, and Gina was underneath the car.
Rosario saw it all, and Elias rushed outside when she heard the noise.
"My daughter and I tried to lift the car, but we couldn't," said Elias, who has lived on the block for 14 years.
Rosario scrambled under the car to try to rescue her daughter, Elias said, but neighbors
began shouting at Elias and Steven Agudelo, Rosario's boyfriend, to extract Rosario, who is deaf.
"The car was spilling gasoline," Elias said. "I had to get my daughter out."
Inside Elias' house, Rosario, still with shards of glass in her feet from the wreckage, knelt and wept, rocking back and forth with a photo of her daughter in her arms.
Elias went to the doorway and took the framed picture from her.
"That's my Gina," Elias said, showing a photo of a little girl with brown hair and a wide smile. "So beautiful."
Gina, she said, was a sweet girl and a dancer who liked to jump rope and play with her cousin. She was a student at the Willard School, and she adored the High School Musical movies.
A mere two doors down, Vanessa Boyer remembered Aaliyah, her petite granddaughter, as "my angel," a proud big sister to two siblings.
Inquisitive and happy, "Pooka," as the family called her, loved saying the alphabet and couldn't wait to ride the bus to school next fall as a first grader. She was quiet around strangers but talked up a storm around her family, especially the younger ones.
"She would rock them when they cried," Boyer said. "She would get their bottles, make faces at them to make them laugh."
Aaliyah lived at Boyer's house with her mother, Boyer's daughter Kaillalah Griffin.
Latoya Smith, the sister of Kaillalah Griffin's boyfriend, Theo Canada, lived there, too, with her baby. The family moved in six months ago from Frankford and Victoria Streets.
Relatives said that Wednesday night, Aaliyah asked for a dollar to buy some candy
for them. She came back with Blow Pops for everyone, and wanted to sit out front to eat hers.
Normally, Aaliyah wouldn't be allowed out front, Boyer said, because the street is too dangerous. Nearby shootouts and robberies made Boyer think it might be time to move to a quieter neighborhood.
"It's safer out back," Boyer said, "but she was sitting out there because it was nice. She said, 'Mom, can I sit outside with Toya?' "
Kaillalah Griffin gave in and sent her daughter to the front steps with Smith and Remedy, who had just figured out walking and was going to have a birthday party this weekend.
Latoya, Boyer said, was thrilled to have a little girl after two boys.
"She just stayed with her baby," Boyer said. "She loved that little girl. She'd be out there with that pink stroller."
Aaliyah had brought a jump rope with her to the steps. As soon as Gina came over, Aaliyah ran back inside and kicked off her worn pink flip-flops, which still lay on Boyer's blue-and-white tile floor yesterday. Aaliyah had just gotten new sandals that tied to her ankles, and thought they would be better to jump in.
She never got the chance.
Boyer, watching television in a front bedroom, heard the impact and bolted.
"By the time we jumped up and got down the steps, it was all over," Boyer said.
"It was a mess - the babies were underneath the car."
Inside Boyer's house, four candles glowed in the window. LaTanya Griffin, Kaillalah
Griffin's sister and Aaliyah's aunt, placed them there in memory of the dead.
Ted Canada, father of Latoya Smith and grandfather of Aaliyah and Remedy, stood in a light rain, puzzling as yet another tragedy targeted his family.
"It's crazy. It's senseless," said Canada, a bus driver. "They were kids, innocent kids, playing together, and this idiot jumps the curb. I can't find no sense in that."
Canada, a member of the anti-violence group Men United for a Better Philadelphia, lost his son Lamar to murder in 2005. Two years ago, another granddaughter was killed in a traffic accident.
"It hasn't hit me yet," he said of the latest blow. "I'm just . . . the only thing
that holds me up is knowing that those babies are in the arms of the Lord."
Porscha Canada, Latoya's sister, wept for the baby they called NeeNee.
"She was gorgeous," Canada said. "Everyone loved her. She was 1. My sister was 22. Pooka was 6 - babies."
Canada said she wasn't about to hate Donta Cradock and Ivan Rodriguez, the men charged with the four murders.
"What's the point of being angry now?" she asked.
Tammy Rosario, clutching a rosary and wearing her brother's hooded sweatshirt, did not feel the same way.
"I want them to pay for what they did. I will never forgive you for this. You killed my child," she said.
Of her daughter Gina, Rosario said: "She was so bright, and now she's gone. She was only 7! I had two beautiful children. Now I just have one."
At the nearby Willard School, principal Ron Reilly watched a stream of uniformed students run into the school yard.
Gina was a second grader there, at the school since kindergarten.
"Everybody knows her and loves her," Reilly said. "She always had a smile for me."
In the community, anger and grief prevailed.
Jimmy Borras, who lives nearby, said the city should build a safe place for the neighborhood children to play. Without a close playground or rec center, youngsters often just congregate on Third Street, playing handball against a warehouse wall.
"We need a rec," Borras said. "All our kids are out here. We have no playground.
There are lots of abandoned buildings, but nothing for our kids."
Others decried the way cars speed through the neighborhood.
"They fly," said Gina's grandmother, Elias. "This is like an expressway."
Borras said he took some comfort in the way the accident has brought the already tight-knit community closer. Before, the Boyers and Griffins didn't know the Rosarios.
But at mid-afternoon yesterday, Tammy Rosario approached Boyer, embracing her.
"It doesn't matter who it happens to," Borras said. "It happens to someone in this neighborhood, it happens to your family."
Last night, about 200 people gathered on Third Street for a vigil.
Alfredo Toro stood nearby and gave long hugs to his nieces, acknowledging that the moment reminded him of just how precious they were.
"They're three little angels," he said of the young victims. "They didn't harm nobody."
Verna Brown kneeled to speak to her grandson, Devon Brown Griffin, 4, who knew the
victims and played with them frequently.
"She's left the doctor's," Brown told the boy. "She's gone to heaven." ))
Tragic...just too damn tragic.
I used to live real close to Victoria Street and Frankford...one block over on E. Pacific, so I know that neighborhood well.
The Feltonville area where the killings occurred borders the Olney area, just on the East side of Roosevelt Boulevard, and I used to work near that area. Many of the streets are now full of empty buildings, and a lot of the streets around there are small, parking only on ONE SIDE...yeah, they're that narrow.
Annsbury Street DOES happen to have a double yellow line down it and IS, in fact a TWO-WAY street for the few blocks it runs (parking on both sides - a rareity in that part of the city). So you KNOW how fast that mook must have been going as he lost in going around the corner of 3rd St. to slam into the steps on THAT street. Used to be a neighborhood of factory workers, but all that changed back in the 1970s.
This article also pertains to the killings:
((Suspects in deadly crash were known to police
By Joseph A. Slobodzian and Michael Matza
Inquirer Staff Writers
On Wednesday evening, the young men, stepbrothers, had growing criminal histories and outstanding arrest warrants.
Then, in less than 15 minutes, police allege, 18-year-old Donta Cradock and Ivan Rodriguez, 20, graduated from stealing a motorcycle at gunpoint to murder in a horrific car crash that stunned a Feltonville block with the split-second end of the lives of a young mother and three children.
Though separated two years ago when Cradock was sent to a juvenile facility in Pittsburgh after an armed holdup in Philadelphia for a pack of beer, they appear to have been reunited - illegally - two months ago when Cradock disappeared 15 April while home on a pass.
Since then, Cradock seems to have remained in the area despite a bench warrant for his arrest. Rodriguez was also on the lam - wanted after he failed to appear June 2 for a preliminary hearing on charges involving a stolen car.
Now each will be charged with four counts of murder, and Feltonville neighbors and public officials want to know how two men with troubling criminal records remained at large.
Among them is Cradock's mother, Vanessa Cradock, who said she also raised Rodriguez.
In an interview with NBC 10 news, she said she had called her son's probation officer after he failed to return to Pittsburgh when his pass expired.
No one came to pick up the wayward 18-year-old.
Police Capt. James Clark, head of the homicide unit, told reporters yesterday that Cradock and Rodriguez are "well-known to police."
Most of their arrests are not public record because they occurred when the two were juveniles. But police said yesterday that Cradock had eight arrests - five involving firearms - and Rodriguez five, many involving stolen vehicles or stolen car parts.
Police said the .357 Magnum revolver used to steal the motorcycle was found in the wrecked Pontiac with Cradock.
Police said that after Rodriguez was arrested at his home, a search of his house yielded a 20-gauge sawed-off shotgun, a 7 mm hunting rifle, and a pellet rifle.
Cradock's one arrest in public court records occurred April 2, 2006, and involved charges of robbery, conspiracy, firearms violations, and related counts. Because of his age, the case was referred to Family Court.
Court system sources say the robbery involved the stickup of a pedestrian for an eight-pack of beer.
A police spokesman, Lt. Frank Vanore, said Cradock's record goes back to about age 12 and includes one incident that ended in a car crash.
Cradock, who police said drove the car that crashed, was hospitalized but expected to recover. He lived in the 300 block of East Rockland Street, about five blocks northeast of the crash site, on Third Street near Annsbury Street.
Clark said Rodriguez was arrested Wednesday night at his home in the 4100 block of North 8TH street, about five blocks to the southwest in Hunting Park.
The victims were Latoya Smith, 22; her daughter, Remedy, who would have turned 1 today;
Aaliyah Griffin, 6, who Clark said was related to Smith; and Gina Marie Rosario, 7,
the daughter of a neighbor.
Officials yesterday tried to calm tensions created by early reports that Cradock crashed the silver Pontiac Grand Am because he was fleeing a high-speed police pursuit.
Mayor Nutter called the four deaths "just a completely crazy random action."
"There's not a situation in the city where there should be a feeling of any kind of panic, but we are constantly telling the public that there are people on the streets who should not be," Nutter said.
"The bottom line is unfortunately there are some bad people in society who do the craziest things that are unexplainable," he added.
"This was not a pursuit," Clark told reporters at yesterday's news conference.
Clark said a traffic patrol officer approached the Pontiac from behind as it was stopped at a traffic light on Roosevelt Boulevard at Third Street.
The Pontiac's driver apparently spotted the officer getting out of the vehicle; drove up on the pavement, sideswiping several cars in traffic; then sped south on Third Street.
"The vehicle took off. He got back in" the patrol car, Clark said. "He wasn't even in a close proximity. He could see [the Pontiac], but he was not close enough to him to consider a pursuit."
A tape of the police radio conversations seems to validate Police Commissioner Charles
H. Ramsey and Clark's assessment.
There is no sense of urgency in the officers' voices, just the relaying of information - until the traffic patrol officer arrives on the scene a few minutes after the 7:36 p.m. crash.
"We got a lot of injuries down here. Get me some rescue," the patrolman says into the radio, concern in his voice.
"Let me know where the injuries are. What are the injuries?" replies the dispatcher.
"Get me some rescue . . ."
"Let me know where to send them at, sir," replies the dispatcher. "Where are they? . . ."
"Annsbury and Third Street," the officer quickly answers. "Get me rescue."
Police said the Pontiac sped down Third Street and then appeared to jump the curb just south of Annsbury.
The Pontiac ran over Smith, seated on a stoop with a baby carriage nearby and the two young girls talking to her. The girls' backs were to the car. The baby was ejected from the carriage on impact. The girls were caught under the car. The vehicle stopped when it wedged and crumpled between a house and utility pole.
Ramsey called the scene of the crash "horrific."
Police did not know how fast the car was traveling at impact, but Ramsey said it must have been moving at high speed: "There were no skid marks that I saw . . . which means there was no attempt to break the speed prior to impact."
The chain of events began at 7:29 p.m., when, police said, the two men accosted a 29-year -old motorcyclist in the 5400 block of Rising Sun Avenue in Olney.
One of the robbers drew a gun and ordered the motorcyclist to surrender his bike, which was later recovered, police said.
One of the robbers, who police allege was Rodriguez, jumped on the Yamaha and sped off
toward the Boulevard. The gunman, who police allege was Cradock, got into the Pontiac and sped off after the cycle.
Moments later, police said, the traffic patrol officer was stopped by an unidentified man in an SUV, who pointed out the Pontiac at C Street and the boulevard and said it was just involved in an armed carjacking.
Ramsey said the fault for Wednesday night's events belongs solely with the two suspects:
"They committed an armed robbery. They have a long list of violent offenses. They have
guns. They're out harming people. They have no regard for life whatsoever."
So there you go. An otherwise nice evening in Philly turned REAL bad...REAL fast.
Goes to show you that in today's world, no matter HOW safe you might believe you are at any given moment, someone might have other plans for your life.
The best we can do is remain on guard, and attempt to avoid such cases.
It can come at you from left field...
Or it can come when you least expect it.
Being vigilant with yourselves and your children should be the first duty of every parent or concerned citizen in every city in every state across this great nation.
To do otherwise, negates much of the reason we are here in the first place.
(Oops, almost forgot - This Sunday is FLAG DAY, so make sure to have Old Glory proudly displayed)
Do have yourselves a good weekend, and...
Stay safe out there, America.