Basement

Question: Over the years we have had numerous water problems with our finished basement. In the far left of the basement, we enclosed the area that has the sump hole and made it a closet. We have a new sump pump in there, and one in the window well outside, which used to overflow when we had severe rain. It seems that even though the window well is piped to a French drain, the amount of water from all the other townhouses in the development backs into it during heavy rain. We had had no problem since we put in the sump pump in the window well.

A Burlington County grand jury has indicted a 34-year-old man for growing marijuana in his basement last year, authorities announced Wednesday. David J. Stanton of Fieldsboro used a false wall to conceal 80 marijuana plants he was growing in two areas with the use of indoor-gardening lights, Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi said. Acting on a tip, state police arrested Stanton on June 28, with assistance from the Prosecutor's Office. The street value of his operation was $156,000, officials said.

Two 15-year-old Camden boys, who crashed a stolen car into the basement of a home while trying to elude police Thursday, were released in custody of their parents at a preliminary hearing in Camden County Juvenile Court yesterday. The boys, whose identities were not released by police because of their age, face a hearing in juvenile court at an undetermined date. Camden police said the boys stole a 1981 Buick Riviera from the 1100 block of North 24th Street at 4:30 a.m. Thursday and were driving around the city when they spotted a police car at East State Street and Wayne Avenue.

The homeowner didn't have a clue, so neither did the cable TV repairman as he ducked into the basement. Then he heard a noise. "He heard growling, and he thought it was the guy upstairs," a witness told New York's Fox5 TV station. "And when he turned around he saw the bear laying there. . . . He left all his equipment there and ran out. " A large black bear. A 500-pounder, officials estimated. The incident unfolded Wednesday afternoon in a crowded neighborhood Hopatcong, Sussex County, where the bear had been spotted earlier in the day. The basement was accessible from outside.

Police are investigating the slaying of a 59-year-old man who was found bound, gagged and beaten to death in the basement of his North Philadelphia home. Wesley Murray's death was one of two homicides reported over the weekend. Officers responding to a call for a hospital case found Murray in the basement on the 2300 block of West Firth Street about 4:53 p.m. Friday, police said. He had been bound at the wrists and gagged and had suffered blunt trauma injuries to the head, neck and body, police said.

Police are investigating the shooting death of a man whose body was found this morning in a basement in East Germantown. There is no word yet from police on who discovered the body, but they say the man was pronounced dead at the scene at 8:18 a.m. The victim is described as being between 40 and 50 years old and police said he had been shot twice in the back. The body was found in the basement of a home on the 800 block of East Price Street, police said. Police in the meantime identified a man who was shot and killed in Olney early Thursday as Willie Lee Withers, 32. Withers lived on the 800 block of South 58th Street in West Philadelphia, police said.

The District Attorney's Office refiled charges Thursday against a man a judge had dismissed as a defendant in the kidnapping and abuse case involving the imprisonment of four mentally challenged adults in a Tacony basement. Eddie Ray Wright, 50, is charged with aggravated assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, reckless endangerment, false imprisonment, terroristic threats, and stalking. A hearing is set for Jan. 20. Wright remains in custody, said his lawyer, Lou D'Onofrio, who said he plans to ask the court to dismiss the charges again.

A 15-year-old girl who was reported missing in Florida in July and turned up in Philadelphia is not a victim of the ring that held four mentally disabled adults captive in a dank basement in Tacony, Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said this morning. But there is a possible link. Benita Rodriguez, of West Palm Beach, was last seen on July 4 in the company of Gregory Thomas Jr., son of one of the three arrested in enslavement case, police in Florida say. But Ramsey said this morning Rodriguez is not a victim of the ring, describing her - as Florida police have - as a runaway.

Philadelphia police defused a live pipe bomb yesterday that cops believe had been planted inside a woman's house in East Germantown by a former boyfriend. A woman discovered the 12-inch steel pipe in the basement of her home on Chew Avenue near Duval Street about 4:15 p.m., police said. "She showed it to a family member who was an off-duty police officer, and he thought it was a bomb," said Counter Terrorism Chief Inspector Joseph Sullivan. Members of the police Bomb Disposal Unit were called to the scene, and nearby residents were evacuated.