June 5, 2013 plus 3
Sunday was the third anniversary of the building collapse that crushed the Salvation Army thrift store at 22nd and Market Streets. Six people died and 13 were injured.
"Closure" is the cliché used when talking about the families of victims of crime or tragedies. Talk to those families, however, and you learn that closure is as elusive as the answer to why their loved one died. A killer's sentencing doesn't bring it and neither does a lawsuit's award of damages.
Sunday was the third anniversary of the building collapse that crushed the Salvation Army thrift store at 22nd and Market Streets. Six people died and 13 were injured.
Two men -- the demolition contractor and the excavator operator he hired – are serving long prison terms after being convicted of or pleading guilty to multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault. On Sept. 6, jury selection will begin in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court for the consolidated personal injury lawsuit on behalf of all the victims to determine if anyone should be held liable for money damages in the disaster.
But the families of those killed "continue to grieve, a process that never ends." Those were the words from City Treasurer Nancy Winkler and her husband, Jay Bryan, whose 24-year-old daughter, Anne Bryan and Anne's best friend Mary Simpson, also 24, died in the collapse. So did shoppers Roseline Conteh, 52, and Juanita Harmon, 75, and store employees Borbor Davis, 69, and Kimberly Finnegan, 35.
Winkler, who has become the voice for the families of those killed on June 5, 2013, marked the anniversary with Bryan in a statement calling the collapse "a preventable tragedy that shook our community to its core.
"As we and the other families and loved ones continue to grieve … we work harder than ever to try to make sure that such a catastrophe can never happen again," read the statement. "To that end, we continue to urge the community to support sound construction and demolition safety reforms to protect the public. Now, not after another disaster."
Since the collapse, the Salvation Army has donated the land on which the thrift store was located for what will become a Memorial Park commemorating the victims.
According to the website for the nonprofit Memorial Park Committee, www.june5memorial.org, $335,000 needs to be raised to meet the $1.05-million goal to begin construction in the fall.