Archive: February, 2011
A gun-toting thug walked-up to a Feltonville Dunkin Donuts drive-thru Thursday morning and demanded cash, police said.
The masked crook pointed a gun at the cashier inside the store, on Hunting Park Avenue near Rising Sun, at about 12:30 a.m.
Police said that the man walked away with about $200. No one was injured but the cashier was pretty shaken-up, according to the manager.
Update: City police have acknowledged that an officer made a mistake when he shot an innocent man’s dog to death Wednesday night during a narcotics bust in West Philadelphia.
“My feeling is that the owner of the dog will seek and will probably, definitely get some type of reimbursement from the city,” said Lt. Ray Evers, police spokesman.
Following complaints from neighbors about drug sales coming out of a home on Pennsgrove Street near 42nd, police set up a surveillance operation of the house Wednesday night and busted five buyers, Evers said.
In a tragic sequence of events Monday, a Vietnam veteran who neighbors said was a hoarder, died of a heart attack while smoking a cigarette that then fell out of his hands and caught his Wissinoming house on fire, according to findings from the Medical Examiner's Office and the fire marshal.
Neighbors said Bob Irvine, 60, who worked as a welder at the airport, had trash piles throughout his house and an official from the Department of Licenses and Inspections said debris was more than two feet high in the home on Howell Street near Tackawanna.
Today, the Medical Examiner's Office determined Irvine died of a heart attack and was dead before the start of the fire. The Fire Marshal's Office determined that the cause of the fire was smoking, leading to the conclusion that Irvine was smoking when he had the heart attack and then dropped his cigarette, which began the blaze.
A female bartender in Kensington slipped on some ice while chasing a cash-snatching bandit Tuesday night, police said.
The 55 year-old bartender told police that a well-dressed white man, about 6-feet-2 with black curly hair, entered Luke’s Bar on Cedar Street near Haggert at 11:30 p.m.
The man didn’t make any demands or announcements; instead he simply reached into the register and stole $100, police said.
An arsonist has haunted -- but not physically harmed -- two Upper Darby families twice in the last week.
Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said the firebug poured gasoline and lit three matches on the first floor porch of an apartment building on State Road near Parkview Road about 2 a.m. today.
A tenant extinguished the small flames with a bucket of water. Chitwood said the arsonist pulled the same stunt on the same porch about 3 a.m. on Feb. 14.
With record warm temperatures Friday night, police in Center City and North Philadelphia were forced to spend time dealing with crowds of teens that had some thinking back to last year’s flash mob scares.
At one point, a crowd of teens walking on Chestnut Street west of Broad Street forced the Shops at Liberty Place to lock its doors at 6 p.m., CBS3 reported.
“Nobody was letting anyone come in or out because everyone was really, really nervous,” customer Annie Perkins-Link told CBS3. “Security guards were everywhere and a lot of the store personnel were kind of scared.”
Elsewhere Friday night, South Street was abuzz and police were scattered about as folks made their way outdoors to enjoy the exceptionally warm February evening.
Philadelphia and Abington police raided a Lawndale pawnshop Friday morning after an investigation found that burglars had allegedly fenced stolen goods there.
Police raided Lawndale Coins and Collectibles on Rising Sun Avenue near Levick Street and retained search warrants for the owner's home in Rockledge, Montgomery County, where they recovered loads of jewelry, jewelry boxes, coins and other items suspected of being stolen property.
The raid stemmed from the arrests of two Northeast Philadelphia men, William Perkins, 62, of Langdon Street near Napfle Avenue, and John Daniel Wilson, 46, of Kingfield Road near Pocasset. Both were charged in October with burglarizing multiple homes in Abington, Cheltenham and Philadelphia.
Police said a 19-year-old man was in critical condition Thursday night after he was shot in the face in West Oak Lane.
The victim was shot once in the face on 66th Avenue near 18th Street at 8:36 p.m. He was transported to Albert Einstein Medical Center in a private vehicle.
Police have no motive or arrests in the shooting. Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to contact Northwest Detectives at 215-686-3353.
A man was stabbed during a robbery in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia Thursday night, police said.
The 34-year-old man was stabbed once in the leg by two thugs on Clearfield
 Street near Front at about 6:05 p.m.
He was taken to Temple University Hospital where he is in stable condition.
Police identified a man gunned down in an Oxford Circle rowhouse last night as Chad Marchewski, 21, of Foulkrod Street near Langdon in Summerdale.
Marchewski was shot in the back of the head during an argument inside the property, on Van Kirk Street near Castor Avenue, about 9 p.m. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene. Police reported no suspects. Tipsters can call homicide detectives at (215) 686-3334 or -3335.
