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NBC10 First Alert Weather: Chance for Showers on the 4th

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There will be a shower threat for the 4th of July, but it won't wash out the holiday. Rip currents are another risk at the shore and beaches. NBC10 meteorologist Brittney Shipp has the forecast.

Gesner Street, One Year Later: 'It's Not the Same'

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A year after the fire tore through Gesner Street, gutting homes and robbing children of their lives, the smell of burning still lingers in the air, putrid and persistent, never allowing the neighbors a moment to forget the tragedy.

And if the smell of burned-down houses and lost lives wasn’t bad enough, whenever neighbors step out of their rowhomes, they’re met with the view of several blackened houses, still standing precariously, most barely touched since the Fourth of July weekend blaze last year changed the block forever.

“I hate when it rains, because you really smell it,” said one neighbor, Rasheeda Seward, as she sat on her porch one afternoon this week. Seward, a co-block captain on Gesner Street whose house on the south side of the block was ruined inside by the blaze that spread to eight houses in minutes, said she’s been trying to live life as normally as possible since she moved back in just before New Year’s Day.

“I’m still adjusting,” said Seward, a woman of 40 with close-cropped light brown hair and a pretty smile who’s lived on Gesner Street for about a decade, as she tried to unwind with a beer after work. “I’m just happy to be home, but I’m not happy to have to look at that.”

It’s hard to move on, she said, when she’s met with the sight and smell of the devastating fire every day and so much about life on the block isn’t normal. Seward and other neighbors said they won’t even walk on the sidewalk on the south side of the street, where the fire-torn houses still stand, surrounded by singed wreckage.

“It’s horrible,” Seward said. “When I go to the store, I walk in the street. We all walk on the street.”

‘A Safe Haven’

There was a time when Gesner Street, tucked away in the heart of rough-and-tumble Southwest Philadelphia, was a sanctuary for tight-knit neighbors from as near as around the corner and as far as West Africa — a place where the sounds of children playing on row house porches echoed off the brick-and-siding houses.

“The block was like a safe haven,” said Tyrone Watson, a co-block captain who lives on the corner of the block just south of bustling Woodland Avenue. “The kids would be out, and you always knew someone was watching them.”

That Gesner Street is becoming an increasingly distant memory for residents a year after the merciless inferno took the lives of four of the block’s tiniest occupants — 1-month old Taj Jacque, his brother, 4-year-old Patrick Sanyeah Jr., and 4-year-old twins Maria and Marialla Bowah, all children of Liberian immigrant parents — and swallowed up eight homes, leaving several others damaged.

For the people left on the street today, Gesner is limbo, a space caught between the inner-city multicultural oasis it once was and the fiery hell it became on that harrowing night after the Fourth of July, when a couch on a porch somehow caught fire, combusting into the blaze that would reach three alarms and ignite nearly the entire block before it would finally be put out.

“I can’t sleep. I never sleep. I’m always up,” said Grace Young, who has lived across the street from the homes that burned for nearly two decades, as she stood on her porch last week surveying the charred remains that surround the row house she shares with her husband.

Young, whose pink tank top stood out against the backdrop of the blackened rowhomes, said she’ll never forget the night of the fire, which sparked about 2:30 a.m. July 5, 2014 and moved like lightning through the old, wood-flanked porches. She was roused from sleep by the screams of people who jumped out windows in various states of undress to escape the flames and the sound of people banging on front doors to wake residents for fear that the fire would engulf both sides of the street.

Young thought she was dreaming of a sunrise at the shore when she opened her eyes and saw the bright-orange light shining through the cracks in her shades, she said. Instead, she woke up to a fiery nightmare that continues to replay in her mind to this day.

“When I opened the shade, this middle home was just lit up,” she said, pointing across the street toward the soot-covered remains of the houses. “It looked like hands just gripping the house … there was too much fire for anyone to come out the front of their homes. It was covering the front of their houses.”

The fire burned so furiously that Young’s windows shattered and some of the siding on her home melted. Her home is still damaged. Her next-door neighbor, she said, moved off the block because she couldn’t stand to be there anymore, faced every day with the evidence of the tragedy staring back at her.

“She was like, ‘Grace, I’m out of here. I have to go. I can’t keep looking at these homes,’” Young, who couldn’t recall the woman’s name, said. “She knew the family of the kids who died, so it really affected her.”

Fire officials said in the month after the blaze that because the devastation was so severe, they were unable to conclusively determine the blaze’s cause. Murmurs that the culprit was firecrackers lit long after holiday celebrations wrapped up for the night went unconfirmed, but still surface whenever neighbors talk about the fire.

Life Beyond the Flames

On any given day, this is life on Gesner Street now:

The eerie detritus of burned-down lives remains: A hot-pink claw women’s hair clip, a twisted broom and an old deck of playing cards, still in their plastic case, litter porches of the destroyed houses, mixed in with caked soot, charred pieces of wood, concrete and rusted nails. Flimsy wooden boards cover many of the houses’ windows and doors, but several are missing, allowing the sunlight to peek through holes in the roofs and gaping spaces where windows used to be like eyes from above watching the street below.

Birds that have made homes inside the burned-out structures fly in and out of the houses’ poorly secured second-floor windows and wrecked porch roofs all hours of the day, cooing and rustling their feathers. Black-tar soot, beaten into the pavement by months of heat, then rain, then snow, then heat and rain again, covers the porch steps and the sidewalks outside the destroyed homes.

On the porch of the house where little Taj, Patrick, Maria and Marialla died, piles of jagged wooden beams and trash bags sit in a stack as high as the bottom of the first-floor window. Bricks jut out crookedly at the base of the support beam that once held up the roof of the porch where the children played, in a stark juxtaposition with a brand-new window and a white front door with a gold-colored knob that were recently replaced on the house.

A decimated mattress and smoke-stained broken bed frame with a Green Bay Packers sticker on the headboard leaned haphazardly against one porch until last week, when residents say a local property manager — though not one of the houses’ owners — finally sent one of his own garbage trucks to pick it up. A wall outlet and some kind of small electronic — perhaps an alarm clock — both burned nearly unrecognizable, dangle precariously from cords hanging down from the second-floor front windows of houses, swaying slowly in the summer breeze.

Soot-saturated water from a summer rainstorm drips from a blackened awning still left standing above one porch, and the unmistakable smell of burning, kicked up again by rainwater and wind, wafts through the block. Crushed, discarded beer cans and food wrappers dot the singed debris, as leftover pieces of yellow police tape and a bunch of long-since deflated helium balloons hang from the redbrick porch pillars. Several of the porch roofs have been removed, with only their pillars left standing. One, neighbors say — the one where the fire is thought to have started — fell on its own before workers came to remove several of the others that were left structurally unsound by the blaze.

To the eye of someone who isn’t trapped on Gesner Street day in and day out, the building permits printed on white paper watermarked with the City of Philadelphia seal plastered on the front of most of the houses — and the one house in between all the devastation that has been almost completely renovated, like new — might suggest progress. But to the residents the block, those permits and the unfinished work are just one more broken promise, another reminder of the abandonment they feel in their torched corner of a city that so valiantly pledged to help them a year ago, in the days after the fire.

The fire, for a moment, shined an international spotlight onto the small block, where many of the homes are rental properties. In the tragedy’s immediate aftermath last July, a Liberian ambassador, as well as several city leaders including council members, Mayor Nutter and a handful of his high-ranking staffers, visited the block to tour the damage and comfort those who lost homes and loved ones. Philly-born star rapper Meek Mill stopped by to donate money and stand in solidarity with the victims.

Thousands of dollars’ worth of donations poured in at Christ International Baptist Church, on the corner of 65th and Gesner, to be distributed to victims. The Church’s pastor, Rev. Dr. Napoleon Divine, who was instrumental in helping the Liberian families recover, has since died of an unknown illness, according to several neighbors and the church’s Facebook page.

Some officials visited the block again days later, when hundreds of neighbors rioted outside Engine 40, Ladder 4, around the corner from Gesner Street on 65th Street near Woodland Avenue, claiming — erroneously, authorities later said — that firefighters took too long to respond to the blaze.

But for all the attention the fire threw onto tiny Gesner Street back then, neighbors there now they’re back to being forgotten, left alone with the shells of the burned houses still looming above them like skeletons.

“Two weeks after it happened, nobody else came. They left us high and dry,” a young man who declined to give his name said as he smoked on the front steps of a house on Gesner Street on a recent afternoon. “That’s not right. If it happened in Old City or Manayunk, it wouldn’t be that way.”

‘We Were All Family’

The lack of improvement on most of the decimated homes has stymied efforts by neighbors who try to take care of their block to keep it clean.

“We had our block cleanup. It just didn’t look clean,” said Watson, the block captain, as he stood outside the destroyed houses wearing a white baseball cap one afternoon earlier this week. “You clean around it, clean around the dirt. People don’t have the energy. This is going to stay like this for a while.”

Watson said his and other neighbors’ efforts to clear the alleys that bolster Gesner Street’s houses on either side — the overgrowth and trash in which he said stymied firefighters’ efforts during the blaze — have been unsuccessful thus far. He said city officials with the PhillyRising program are on board to help clear the narrow alleyways — but only if neighbors on Paschall and Saybrook avenues, which share them, will help, too.

Watson said so far, he hasn’t had luck connecting with block leaders on the 6500 blocks of Paschall and Saybrook to get moving on the alley clean-up.

Other neighbors agreed the impassable alleys are a problem.

“It’s overgrown,” Kim Walker, a homeowner whose row house was badly damaged in the fire, said. “God forbid if you have to evacuate your house from the back, you can’t get out.”

Neighbors said the burned-out, gutted row houses, with their imposing sight and smell assaulting the senses, haunt them, making it hard to piece their broken lives back together.

On a recent morning, Walker, who bought her house on the south side of the block in 2006, crouched in the street with a trash bag, pulling weeds from the sidewalk. The inside of her house, including her front bedroom and her enclosed porch, were badly damaged when the fire spread to her house — five houses from where it is believed to have originated. She and her daughter got back into the house in December, but Walker said even though it’s nice to be home, it’s difficult to be on the block with the memories of the trauma so fresh.

“It’s not the same. We were all family here,” Walker said. “A lot of us don’t try to walk on that side of the block. It’s hard just to walk past.”

She said her 11-year-old daughter, who was home with her uncle at the time of the fire while Walker was away on vacation in New Orleans with Seward still has nightmares, and the sight of the burned houses doesn’t help.

“That’s something we have to walk through every day. My child has to look at that,” Walker, who works as a director at a preschool and early education center. “She used to play on that porch.”

The quiet bothers them, too.

“It’s not the same because we’re used to seeing the kids, and we don’t see the kids no more,” said Jackie McFadden, who lives on the south side of Gesner Street a few houses west of Walker.

She looked wistfully down the block toward the burned houses.

“See, the block is quiet,” she said. “Normally the kids would be on the porch. We just miss them.”

A Lack of Progress

Most of the badly damaged houses that aren’t yet repaired were rented and are owned by landlords who neighbors say are doing nothing fast to improve them.

Young, the woman who lives across the street from the burned houses, said it’s been several weeks since she saw anyone doing work on the houses that remain badly damaged. One has been cited by the city Department of Licenses and Inspections as being imminently unsafe, according to a warning dated May 9 posted on its exterior.

The warning reads that if the property owner fails to begin repairing or tear down the house within 30 days, the city could take action and tear it down.

But Young and other neighbors said that, aside from one house that’s been almost completely rehabbed and that contractors continued working on last week, they haven’t seen a soul touch any of the houses since the spring. That’s when, according to residents of the block, many of the property owners cleaned out the insides of the houses and some posted building permits.

“It’s been a good month now and there hasn’t been any work,” Young said, standing on her spacious front porch that her family barely uses anymore. “This is what we’re looking at now.”

Most on the block anticipate that there will be a vigil sometime this weekend for the children, but since people have lost touch with the families who were forced out by the fire, they were unsure when they’ll return.

Efforts by NBC10 to reach Eleanor Jacque and Patrick Sanyeah, the parents of baby Taj and little Patrick Jr., as well as to reach Dewen “Marie” Bowah, the twins’ mother, and other family members have been unsuccessful.

People on the block said they see some of those who lost their homes from time to time.

“They come back. Everybody that’s been burned out, they come back,” Watson said as he leaned against his car and sipped a can of soda on a recent afternoon. “They come around. You see them driving through. They miss it.”

The ones still there miss it, too. Gesner Street is a shell of its former self.

“It’s definitely a totally different area now.” Young said, frowning. “If I had the money, I’d be out.”
 


Contact Morgan Zalot at 610.668.5574, morgan.zalot@nbcuni.com or follow @MorganZalot on Twitter.



Photo Credit: NBC10.com
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NJ Police Shoot, Kill Armed Man in 'Suicide by Police'

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Police in Camden, New Jersey shot and killed an armed man who authorities said threatened officers late Friday night. Officials said early Saturday morning that the fatal shooting appeared to be suicide by police.

The incident began about 11:20 p.m., when Camden County Police officers responded to a corner in the city's Cramer Hill neighborhood for the report of a man threatening to kill himself and police. A preliminary investigation, officials said, revealed that the suspect himself called 9-1-1 as he was driving in East Camden and told the dispatcher that he had a gun, wanted to die and would shoot police officers.

Officers found the man's vehicle unoccupied at Bergen and Harrison avenues, but when they got out of their car to investigate, the armed man approached them and pointed his gun at them, according to a police news release. Two officers opened fire on the man, fatally wounding him.

Police have not yet identified the suspect, but said he is in his 30s and was prohibited from possessing a gun due to a prior conviction for drug distribution. Officers at the scene recovered the loaded firearm he had been carrying, authorities said.

As is protocol with any police-involved shooting, authorities said the officers involved will be assigned to administrative duty pending the outcome of an investigation.



Photo Credit: NBC10

Shootings Overnight Leave Five Wounded

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Overnight shootings in Philadelphia, including one in University City, left several people wounded early Saturday morning.

At 1:37 a.m., police said, officers were called to Sansom Street near 36th after an argument at a bar escalated into gunfire. A 29-year-old man suffered two gunshot wounds, one of which hit him in the stomach, and a 32-year-old man was wounded in the thigh and knee, according to police.

Both men were taken to Presbyterian Hospital, where they were in critical condition Saturday afternoon. Police said an argument ensued in a bar down the street from where the shooting occurred, and that when the victims stepped outside, a group of men in a car with Maryland tags opened fire on them.

Both victims were legally carrying guns of their own, and one opened fire back at the car, according to police. It was unclear whether anyone in the car was wounded.

Police described one suspect in the shooting as a 21- to 30-year-old black man with a light complexion, scruffy facial hair and a medium build. They said he is roughly 5 feet 6 and wore a white T-shirt, shorts that may have been cargo shorts and a bucket hat.

A second suspect, described as being taller and thinner than the first suspect, was also described.

Less than a half-hour before that, about 1:10 a.m. Saturday, police said, officers found a 36-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the chest unresponsive on the ground near 52nd Street and Girard Avenue. Police said the victim was found outside Happy Star Restaurant lying on the sidewalk, but there were no shell casings there, so they were unsure whether the shooting occurred there. The man was taken to Presbyterian for medical care and remained in critical condition Saturday afternoon. Police had no suspects.

In an earlier shooting, police say two men were wounded when someone opened fire at Erie and Germantown avenues in North Philadelphia just before 12:30 a.m. Police said later Saturday that several men had gotten into a fight outside a side entrance to the Eagle Bar just prior to the shooting.

A 31-year-old man suffered three gunshot wounds in that incident -- one to his head, one to the groin and one to the lower back -- and was listed in stable condition at Temple Hospital Saturday afternoon, police said. A second man, age 24, was shot at least twice in his stomach. He remained in critical condition at Temple Hospital Saturday afternoon.

Police said the shooter was described as a short man wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. He fled in an unknown direction.

Tipsters with information in any shooting should contact the police tip line at 215-686-8477.



Photo Credit: NBC10

First Alert Weather: Will Rain Clear for Fireworks?

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Spotty showers will make appearances throughout the early part of your 4th of July celebrations. First Alert meteorologist Brittney Shipp is tracking the light rain and lets us know if it will clear up in time for fireworks.

Photo Credit: NBC10 - Brittney Shipp

Preparing for the Party on the Parkway

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NBC10's Jesse Gary has a list of do's and don'ts for everyone heading to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for 4th of July celebrations.

Frequent Bridge Users Could Get Discount

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The Delaware River Port Authority is proposing bringing back a discount for frequent commuters.

Authority CEO John Hanson says the commuter discount is a help to frequent users of the Commodore Barry and Benjamin Franklin, Betsy Ross and Walt Whitman bridges.

"We simply recognize that we do not need that revenue at this time," he said. "We can forgo it, and we would rather have it in the pocket of commuters than in our pockets here."

Read more about the possible discount here.



Photo Credit: NBCPhiladelphia.com

First Alert Weather: Showers Moving In and Out

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Showers will be moving in and out throughout the day with a high in the 70s. Sunday, dry with a high of 85, will be a much better beach day for those spending the 4th of July weekend down the Shore.

On Parkway, Meet & Greet Olympians

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Team USA brings a preview of the 2016 Olympics games with their Road to Rio exhibit along the Ben Franklin Parkway and Lisa Baird, with the US Olympic Committee, joins Rosemary Connors in the NBC10 studios to reveal which Olympians visitors will have the chance to meet inside the exhibit from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m.

4th of July Marks LGBT 50th Anniversary

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This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the first annual Reminder Demonstration at Philadelphia's Independence Hall. Equality Forum Executive Director Malcom Lazin talks about some of the events around Philadelphia to mark the golden year for the civil-rights movement, including a ceremony at Independence Hall on July 4 emceed by comedian Wanda Sykes.

Milestone for Upper Darby's Summer Stage

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Upper Darby Summer Stage is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and Harry Dietzler, who created the youth musical theater program while he was attending Temple University, talks about some of the events and performances in store for the milestone season. Summer Stage alumni will gather July 10 and 11 at Upper Darby Performing Arts Center in Drexel Hill for the 40th Season Gala Celebration.

Road to Rio: See How it Feels To Be an Olympian

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The one-day Road to Rio exhibit on the Ben Franklin Parkway lets visitors see how it feels to be an Olympian as a way to pump up fans for the 2016 Summer Games taking place in Rio de Janeiro next year.

Handyman Slashes Elderly Woman's Throat: Police

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Police arrested a local handyman accused of violently killing an elderly Philadelphia woman earlier this week inside her East Mount Airy home.

Leroy Wilson, 37, is charged in the murder of 85-year-old Regina Brunner.

Investigators say Wilson was a local handyman who did work for  Brunner as well as several other residents in the area.

Police believe Wilson visited Brunner's home on the 300 block of Roumfort Road Sunday night. They also suspect he began to steal several items once inside the house but was caught in the act by Brunner. That's when police believe Wilson attacked her, beat her and slashed her throat. He then allegedly stole her credit cards, debit card, laptop and Toyota Corolla before fleeing the scene.

Monday morning Brunner's son found her body in her bedroom. Police then found her stolen vehicle on Stillman Street near Clearfield in North Philadelphia the next day. They also recovered her laptop and discovered attempted purchases made with her credit cards and debit card.

Investigators say they traced DNA evidence from the stolen vehicle and laptop back to Wilson. They also say they recovered surveillance photos of Wilson using Brunner's debit card at an ATM machine.

Saturday morning homicide detectives, US Marshals and the Norristown Police Department served a warrant for Wilson's arrest at his girlfriend's home on Brown Street in Norristown, Pennsylvania, investigators say. They then took Wilson into custody.

Investigators say the suspect was known as "Leroy the Handyman" by several Philadelphia residents. They also say he has over 20 prior arrests in Florida and Philadelphia.


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Delaware on Alert for Mosquitoes After Recent Rain

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Officials in Delaware are warning of an increase in the mosquito population after near-record rainfall in the state.

The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control says heavy rains have created plenty of breeding areas for the pests, which lay their eggs in and near bodies of water. Officials say they did a number of spray treatments throughout the state this week to control the population, and additional sprays will be scheduled as necessary. The mosquito population is closely tracked because mosquitoes can transmit West Nile virus.

The News Journal of Wilmington reports higher-than-normal mosquito counts have been reported in Milford, Camden, Laurel and Dover.

A mosquito's lifespan is typically two to seven weeks, depending on the species.

Teen Girl Dies in ATV Crash in NJ

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A teenage girl was killed after two ATVs collided in Burlington County Saturday afternoon.

The 13-year-old girl was riding on an ATV on Allen Road in Washington Township around 3:45 p.m. when she collided with another ATV.

The girl was killed in the crash. Officials have not yet revealed her identity. The 24-year-old man who was riding the other ATV as well as a juvenile who was his passenger were injured in the crash. Police have not yet revealed their conditions. 



Photo Credit: NBC10.com

Investigation Underway In Stabbing Death of NJ Woman

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Police are investigating the homicide of a woman who was found stabbed to death in her South Jersey home earlier this week.

According to a medical examiner's report released on Friday, Lois Collier, 56, died of multiple stab wounds. Police and emergency responders found Collier dead in her home on the 200 block of Weymouth Road in Mullica Township about 3:30 p.m. Thursday when they responded to a 9-1-1 call for a report of an unconscious woman.

The homicide remained under investigation Saturday. Authorities asked that anyone with information about Collier's death contact the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office at 609-909-7666.

Local 4th of July Celebrations

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Check out the sights and sounds from 4th of July celebrations and parades across the region.

Man Drowns at Ocean County Beach

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Officials are investigating the death of a man who drowned at a beach in Ocean County, New Jersey Saturday.

Investigators say a 911 call was made around 2:35 p.m. by life guards at a beach in Mantoloking reporting a 22-year-old man from Yonkers, New York had been swimming with friends when he suddenly disappeared from their sight.

The US Coast Guard, NJ State Police and other crews conducted an extensive search. The man was then found unresponsive by lifeguards at 3:08 p.m. in the beach area at Strickland Avenue in Bay Head, New Jersey. The man was brought to the shore and rescuers performed CPR. He was then taken to Brick Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Officials have not yet revealed the man’s identity. They continue to investigate.
 

Del. Police Program Helps Sick Woman

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Authorities in Delaware say a program that calls seniors to check on their welfare has helped a woman who was having a medical emergency.

The New Castle County Police department is crediting its Senior Roll Call Lifeline with helping the woman. The free program calls residents, many of whom live alone, daily to check in.

Police say on Friday a volunteer received an answering machine numerous times when calling a client. When the volunteer couldn't reach the woman, she called a family member who went over to the woman's residence to check on her. The family member found the woman had fallen and was suffering from a medical illness.

The woman was taken to the hospital and is expected to recover.

New Castle County began the program in the 1990s.



Photo Credit: FILE - Getty Images

Gunman Shoots Man 18 Times in Philly

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A man died from his injuries after he was shot over a dozen times in Philadelphia.

The unidentified man was on the 1700 block of South 53rd Street at 8:43 p.m. Saturday when a gunman opened fire. The man was struck at least 18 times. He was taken to Presbyterian Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 8:53 p.m.

No arrests have been made. Police continue to investigate.
 

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