It was 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 8, 1978, in the first armed battle between MOVE and the Philadelphia Police Department. Ramp was killed and 16 cops and firefighters were injured.
At 6 a.m., an officer had read a warrant and ordered the MOVE members to surrender, then Msgr. Charles Devlin, of the Cardinal's Commission on Human Relations, and many others appealed to MOVE to end the siege.
"Please on behalf of everything that is sane and honest, send out the children," said Devlin.
Bulldozers shoved away the parapet where for 15 months MOVE had threatened a showdown if four of their members weren't released from prison. Using a battering ram, flak-jacketed cops rammed the front, side and basement windows, then a wall, revealing a bag of onions, peanut butter, potatoes and waxed paper.
Deluge tanks were positioned close to the house, where they discharged columns of water directly into the basement.
Hundreds of rats and dozens of dogs emerged from the house all morning, eventually followed by 11 MOVE members and 11 children.
But the rage felt by some police upset by the death of one of their own was saved for the vitriolic Delbert Orr Africa, an ex-Black Panther member and Army vet who counted dead soldiers before shipping them home from Vietnam.
When Delbert Africa climbed through the basement window, a cop grabbed his dreadlocks, dragging him down the street, while others kicked and pounded his body. Other officers jumped the cops to pull them off.
Daily News photographer Norman Lono, who had hidden in the shower of the same apartment as I had, documented the horror from beginning to end.
The next morning I awoke screaming from the images of war. Covering MOVE was a recurring nightmare.
The siege begins
