"The store employees jumped into action," she said. One ran out after the robbers, she said, as another called police on the phone.
Kradzinski ran to her car in the lot, where she had left her two boys, ages 13 and 10. They left immediately and went to the Pathmark down the street.
"I just wanted to get away," she said.
Liczbinski was the third member of Philadelphia's 6,600-member police force to be shot to death by robbers in the last two years.
The department is still healing from the fatal shooting of Officer Chuck Cassidy on Oct. 31 at a Dunkin Donuts in West Oak Lane. Cassidy was shot in the head as he interrupted a robbery. He died the next day at Albert Einstein Medical Center.
In 2006, Officer Gary Skerski was fatally wounded in the neck with a shotgun while responding to a robbery in the city's Frankford section.
"We are all affected by what happened," Nutter said at a news conference outside Temple University Hospital. "I ask the public to rally around the family. They will need ongoing help. I just want to express my personal sympathy to the family and thank the officer for his long, hard work. He made the ultimate sacrifice."
Nutter declared a 30-day period of mourning for Liczbinski and requested that all flags in the city be lowered to half-staff during that time.
He also called on the religious community to recognize today as a day of peace and to pray for Liczbinski and his family.
A friend of Liczbinski's, Sgt. Raymond Evers, said he was an officer who "produced every time."
Evers said that as a detective who had worked with Liczbinski in the Fourth District in South Philadelphia, he had often called on Liczbinski and his partner whenever he needed help finding a witness or nabbing a suspect with a warrant.
"He locked people up, and he was very good at it," said Evers, who now works with the public-affairs unit.
Shortly after 4:30 p.m., a black hearse pulled up to the hospital.
Liczbinski's flag-draped casket was loaded into the hearse. The door was shut.
With more than a dozen Highway Patrol officers on motorcycles leading the way, the hearse slowly pulled away.
Contributing to this article were Inquirer staff writers Dwight Ott, Mark Fazlollah and Walter F. Naedele.
