Center City

Police were investigating the death of a 26-year-old woman found Saturday in the bathroom of a Center City condo owned by high-profile criminal defense lawyer A. Charles Peruto Jr. A maintenance worker found the woman unresponsive just after 10 a.m. in the building at South 20th Street and Delancey Place, said Officer Tanya Little, a Philadelphia police spokeswoman. The woman, whose identity police did not immediately release, was pronounced dead shortly before 10:30. A police source identified the woman as Julia Law. Law described herself as working for the Peruto firm as a paralegal, according to her profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn.

ENOUGH HEARTACHE and confusion was lurking beneath the bricks and shattered slabs of concrete at the Market Street collapse zone to last this city a lifetime. And yet there's more now - more sadness, more pain, more questions that probably won't be answered any time soon. Ronald Wagenhoffer, the city inspector who previously examined the four-story Center City property that collapsed onto a Salvation Army thrift shop June 5, killing six people and injuring 13, committed suicide in a secluded stretch of Roxborough Wednesday night, authorities said.

We didn't see much sun Thursday, but if you were around Logan Square or on Chestnut Street near 17th, you might have spotted the cast of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. " The cable sitcom, which moves this fall from FX to help launch its spin-off channel FXX, is in town for a couple of days shooting on location for its upcoming ninth season. By midafternoon, two of its stars, Kaitlin Olson and Glenn Howerton, were filming a scene at 9th and Green streets. "I'm going to say this is actually a perfect day to shoot," said "Sunny" creator and star Rob McElhenney, who grew up here and knows from Philly weather.

EYEWITNESS NEWS anchor Susan Barnett is leaving CBS 3 and the CW Philly. Barnett has been at CBS since 2006, anchoring the evening newscasts since 2008. She anchored the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. broadcasts on CBS, and the 10 p.m. broadcast at the CW Philly, along with co-anchor Chris May . Her contract expired in March. "I have decided to not renew my contract with the stations at this time. I am incredibly thankful for having been a part of the CBS Philly family, but I feel that this is the right decision at this time," Barnett said in a statement yesterday.

Despite multiple complaints, shoddy demolition work at 22d and Market Streets went uninspected for more than three weeks before the deadly collapse of a building Wednesday, raising basic questions about the city's competence regulating demolition projects. Six people were killed and 14 injured when a four-story brick wall fell onto an adjoining single-story Salvation Army thrift shop. Mayor Nutter and Licenses and Inspections Commissioner Carlton Williams acknowledged Thursday that the city had granted a demolition permit for that project without any inquiry into the contractor's qualifications for demolition work.

The heavy equipment blamed for causing a building collapse that killed six people last Wednesday was only to be used that day for removing debris, and the contractor in charge of the site "didn't see" the excavator doing demolition, his defense attorney said Tuesday. Kenneth Edelin, attorney for contractor Griffin Campbell, said his client was on the job site at 22d and Market Streets when the building fell on the neighboring Salvation Army thrift shop. "He was scared to death, just like everybody else," Edelin said.

When Stephen Girard died in 1831, he was the richest man in America. He left his $7.5 million fortune for a boarding school to educate indigent boys. The bequest was the equivalent of almost $100 billion today. "When I am dead," he said, "my actions must speak for me. " But Girard had the misfortune to die in Philadelphia. His enormous public trust fell under the supervision of a board of local political potentates. Now Girard College, which opened in 1848 with the richest endowment of any educational institution in America - by comparison, Harvard had less than a million - is on life support.

He was once an "undisputed king" of porn. But in his twilight years, he has recast himself as a visionary for a more vibrant downtown. The grand plan of 87-year-old Richard C. Basciano collapsed in a cloud of dust and debris Wednesday when the botched demolition of one of his Center City buildings rained death down on a building below. In an interview last year, Basciano talked of his ambitious plans for the 2100 and 2200 blocks of Market Street, where he planned to transform a decrepit stretch of nondescript buildings that included his shuttered porn theater.

I STOPPED by the super swank Symphony House residences yesterday to have a chat with Richard Basciano about his killer building. "Is he expecting you?" the cranky concierge asked. Well, I didn't know if the owner of the crumbling building that flattened a neighboring Salvation Army thrift store was expecting me . But he should've been expecting someone - like officials from the city seeking answers about his choice of a discount demolition crew, for starters. Basciano's company paid some insta-demolition crew $10,000 for a job demo experts said should have cost closer to $250,000.

Amid massive Philadelphia School District layoffs, the teachers' union Tuesday decried the lack of education funding, Mayor Nutter spent the day in Harrisburg seeking support for schools, and laid-off noontime aides demonstrated outside City Hall. "The students trust us," said Doris Hogue, an aide at South Philadelphia High School and one of 1,203 aides who received pink slips last week. "When fights are getting ready to occur, the students come to us," Hogue said during a rally outside City Hall that drew about 30 aides, students, and parents.

THE MARKET STREET saga is, without question, one of the most depressing chapters in Philadelphia's long, checkered history. Six people were killed when a haphazardly-demolished building collapsed on them June 5 in Center City. A grief-stricken city inspector who had examined 2136-38 Market St. several weeks before it fell onto a Salvation Army thrift shop took his life - a life that included a wife and a young son - Wednesday night. But the whole thing got even darker yesterday, as the Nutter administration and NBC10 argued over the last words that the inspector, Ronald Wagenhoffer, spoke before he put a gun to his chest and pulled the trigger.

Philadelphia city officials say they have found nothing to fault in the performance of a city building inspector who apparently committed suicide Wednesday night, a week after six fatalities at a Center City demolition site that had been one of his assignments. "I will state right here, right now, this man did nothing wrong," Mayor Nutter's chief of staff, Everett Gillison, told reporters Thursday, confirming the death of Ronald Wagenhoffer, 52, an employee of the Department of Licenses and Inspections since 2002.

Dorothy E. "Dot" Saylor, 94, of Aldan, an events planner and athlete who as a teen taught the future Princess Grace of Monaco to swim at the Y, died Thursday, June 6, at home of natural causes. The former Dorothy Stickel was born and raised in the Swampoodle neighborhood of Philadelphia. Mrs. Saylor worked as a summer lifeguard at Philadelphia city pools during her teen years. At the Kelly Pool in East Falls, she taught future City Councilman Jack Kelly and his sister Grace the basics of swimming.

Frank Dunn Where he's from: Originally, from Washington Township, N.J. Has lived in Society Hill for 12 years. What he does: Creates Web-based physician education for several pharmaceutical companies. What he likes about Society Hill: The convenience to Center City and the ability to walk everywhere. He is close to the airport, the suburbs and Jersey. His favorite aspect of the area is the diversity. A Kenyan man asked him for directions last week, and after some conversation they traded contact information so Frank can see him when he travels to Kenya in January.

We didn't see much sun Thursday, but if you were around Logan Square or on Chestnut Street near 17th, you might have spotted the cast of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. " The cable sitcom, which moves this fall from FX to help launch its spin-off channel FXX, is in town for a couple of days shooting on location for its upcoming ninth season. By midafternoon, two of its stars, Kaitlin Olson and Glenn Howerton, were filming a scene at 9th and Green streets. "I'm going to say this is actually a perfect day to shoot," said "Sunny" creator and star Rob McElhenney, who grew up here and knows from Philly weather.

ENOUGH HEARTACHE and confusion was lurking beneath the bricks and shattered slabs of concrete at the Market Street collapse zone to last this city a lifetime. And yet there's more now - more sadness, more pain, more questions that probably won't be answered any time soon. Ronald Wagenhoffer, the city inspector who previously examined the four-story Center City property that collapsed onto a Salvation Army thrift shop June 5, killing six people and injuring 13, committed suicide in a secluded stretch of Roxborough Wednesday night, authorities said.

THE SALVATION ARMY has a one-word answer for anyone who wondered if it rebuffed a request to put protective scaffolding over its Center City thrift shop: No. On Wednesday, the organization refused to address questions that arose after two lawyers separately claimed that the Salvation Army either denied or ignored requests to have scaffolding installed while a demolition crew tore apart a neighboring property at 22nd and Market streets. That four-story building crumbled on June 5, and flattened the narrow thrift store, killing six people and injuring 13 others.

Running Philadelphia can look like a child's game. Rock, paper, scissors: After landlord Richard Basciano hired a bankrupt contractor recommended by a formerly bankrupt architect to hire a marijuana-smoking ex-offender to knock down a building on Center City's main street, a few knowledgeable and conscientious citizens - an architect, bricklayers, people capable of recognizing knuckleheads at work and dangerous structural elements threatening collapse...

Amid massive Philadelphia School District layoffs, the teachers' union Tuesday decried the lack of education funding, Mayor Nutter spent the day in Harrisburg seeking support for schools, and laid-off noontime aides demonstrated outside City Hall. "The students trust us," said Doris Hogue, an aide at South Philadelphia High School and one of 1,203 aides who received pink slips last week. "When fights are getting ready to occur, the students come to us," Hogue said during a rally outside City Hall that drew about 30 aides, students, and parents.

When Stephen Girard died in 1831, he was the richest man in America. He left his $7.5 million fortune for a boarding school to educate indigent boys. The bequest was the equivalent of almost $100 billion today. "When I am dead," he said, "my actions must speak for me. " But Girard had the misfortune to die in Philadelphia. His enormous public trust fell under the supervision of a board of local political potentates. Now Girard College, which opened in 1848 with the richest endowment of any educational institution in America - by comparison, Harvard had less than a million - is on life support.