Chesco

A West Chester man was killed while racing his motorcycle Sunday at the Piston Poppers Race Track in Sadsbury Township, Chester County, police said yesterday. Mark Crosby, 31, was pronounced dead at the Brandywine Hospital and Trauma Center in Caln Township about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, according to state police in Embreeville. Crosby had made it to the finals of the expert class and had completed six of eight laps in the day's last event when the accident occurred about 4:50 p.m., said Yvonne Plank, secretary of the Eastern Pennsylvania Piston Poppers Motorcycle Club Inc. Plank said that Crosby apparently lost control of his cycle, but it was not clear why. "Mark had been racing here for years," Plank said.

The tax man cometh, or at least his assessor does. Single-family houses in the eastern portion of Chester County are being reassessed, meaning that in many areas, data collectors are busy traveling door to door doing quick home inspections. The four crews now working the county are due to finish Tredyffrin and Easttown Townships in a little more than a month. They will then move on to the Phoenixville, Downingtown and Coatesville areas, said Jean Hostetler of Cole-Layer-Trumble Co. of Radnor, the firm the county hired to collect the data.

Florian George "Floyd" Cusack, 78, a Chester County developer and longtime horseman and fox hunter, died Friday at Phoenixville Hospital. He lived in the Marsh Creek section of Downingtown. A Chicago native, Mr. Cusack decided when he was 18 to move east to join a brother who then lived in Philadelphia. A man of wide-ranging interests, Mr. Cusack got into real estate at age 27. He was an avid fox hunter, holding memberships in the Radnor, Pickering, Bellwood and Kimberton Hunt Clubs.

Two residents of a Chester County condominium complex were awakened Saturday by what became a violent home invasion, leading to three arrests Sunday, police said. The Westtown-East Goshen Regional Police Department offered this account in a news release: At 12:15 p.m., a resident of Summit House in East Goshen Township was asleep when he heard a knock at the front door. He said a woman wanted to use his phone because her car was disabled. As the two talked, the resident saw two men preparing to charge the door, and he locked it and ran upstairs.

The Chester County commissioners yesterday proposed a 5 percent annual salary increase for themselves and most row officers and scheduled a July 21 public hearing on the raises. Robert J. Thompson, chairman of the three-member board, said the hearing would be held at 7:30 p.m. in the county courthouse annex in West Chester. If adopted, the salary increases would go into effect Jan. 1, 1988, with additional 5 percent increases in each of the three succeeding years. State law requires that county commissioners hold public hearings and vote on salary increases one year before the elections for officials who would benefit from the change.

Sally Price Murphy, 81, of West Chester, a longtime volunteer at Chester County Hospital, died there Monday. Mrs. Murphy was one of the hospital's original in-house volunteers and was credited by the hospital with logging nearly 15,000 hours there since the program began in 1958. She worked mostly at the front receptionist's desk from two to four days a week. Mrs. Murphy was also a member of the hospital's auxiliary volunteer program and was instrumental in establishing its family lounge.

Guy A. Woodworth, 75, a former Chester County high school teacher, died of cardiac arrest due to pulmonary complications on Oct. 11 at Paoli Memorial Hospital. Mr. Woodworth taught business courses from 1956 at Conestoga High School in Berwyn until he retired from teaching in 1993. He was then in charge of the Conestoga auditorium until 1998. His wife, Christine Woodworth-Batho, said they met in Switzerland in 1995 and, after he retired, they moved to Salisbury, England, in 1998.

Elizabeth W. Bartle, 16, of Wynnewood, was killed late Friday in a one-car crash on a rain-slicked stretch of Route 401 in East Nantmeal Township, Chester County, police said. Miss Bartle, the daughter of Montgomery County Commissioner Chairman Paul B. Bartle, was headed home from a friend's house in Glenmoore when the car in which she was a passenger skidded off the road, rammed a fence and wedged between two trees. She was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 9:30 p.m. The driver, a 16-year-old girl whom police did not name, was treated for cuts to the head at Brandywine Hospital & Trauma Center in Coatesville, and released.

The case of the missing Chester County chief detective was closed yesterday, but the county coffers were not. The Chester County commissioners announced the resignation of Chief of Detectives Albert L. DiGiacomo, 59, at a salary board meeting and then distributed a news release. It said DiGiacomo resigned effective Sept. 27 "to pursue new opportunities in law enforcement and to continue his teaching assignments at local universities. " The commissioners deferred questions to Thomas Whiteman, a county solicitor.

Armed with maps, diagrams and a mock-up of the proposed development, a representative of Rouse & Associates last night gave Chester County officials and residents their first look at ambitious plans for a 1,300-acre tract near Exton. The development, which would include a combination of retail, entertainment, cultural, light-industry and office uses, was described at the meeting by Rouse project manager Gregory Walters as "the type of town center that will become the financial and focal point of the area.