Crack House

It had been three weeks since Etta Juanita Smith had seen her daughter Sharon Mae. Then she answered a knock at the door. "It was two detectives," Smith, 46, said last night on the front stoop on Lansdowne Avenue near 54th. "They told me she was dead . . . I went down to identify her. That's all I know . . . " Sharon Mae Smith, 25, is the woman whose body was found in the dank basement of a West Philadelphia crack house on Tuesday. Smith's body was found after police, responding to rumors that there was a body in a Jamaican crack house on Wanamaker Street near Race, broke into the house.

The 10-year-old South Philadelphia girl who told police she sold drugs from her stepmother's house is back at the house despite the city's claims that the girl and other children were no longer living there. On Friday, two days after police raided the alleged drug house on Bainbridge Street near 13th, Deputy Human Services Commissioner Harold Burton said that the 10-year-old and at least five other children had been removed because of concerns of DHS social workers. The children, he said, are "definitely not in that house," adding that they were with relatives.

A Common Pleas Court jury was trying to decide today whether two 16-year- old runaways brutally murdered another teen in a Southwest Philadelphia crack house, or if a reputed drug boss committed the murder and frightened the boys into confessing. The jury of seven men and five women broke off deliberations yesterday after hearing closing arguments in the murder case of Kempis Songster and Dameon Brome, runaways from Brooklyn, N.Y. The boys are accused of the September 1987 stabbing death of Anjo Pryce, 17, inside a drug house on 58th Street near Whitby Avenue.

The prosecutor urged the jury not to shed tears for the 34-year-old South Philadelphia mother accused of being a crack dealer. "Shed tears for the people whose lives were ruined when she dispensed drugs in the community," said Assistant District Attorney Paul Riley. Nancy Young, of Bailey Terrace in the Wilson Park housing project, denied dealing drugs. She said she lived alone with her three children, and had no idea how crack got into the house. But, wait, the prosecution demanded.

Neighbors on Upland Way near 54th Street in Wynnefield said they know Curtis Hester as a hardworking family man who loves to spend his spare time playing with his two young children in the back yard. From their comments, it appears Hester, 33, would be an unlikely candidate for murder charges. "He's always a perfect gentleman," said Alberta Hughes. "He's got a good job and a beautiful family. " "I don't know him too well," another neighbor said. "But whenever you pass by him, he always smiles and he always speaks.

Three men described by police as Jamaican drug dealers were ordered yesterday to stand trial on murder and criminal conspiracy charges in the beating death of 17-year-old Paul Oates in a Southwest Philadelphia crack house. Owen Hugh Williams, 23, of the 4400 block of North Sixth Street, and brothers Aston A. Gordon, 20, and Ronald E. Gordon, 22, both of the 3200 block of West Susquehanna Avenue, are being held without bail. They are scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 18. Oates' decomposed body was found June 23 in the basement of a fortified drug house at 923 S. 54th St. It had been wrapped in a blanket and placed under the steps.

A narcotics officer shot his way out of the gloomy cellar of a North Philadelphia crack house yesterday afternoon, killing a suspect, then helping a wounded colleague up the steps, police said. Armed with a warrant, several undercover officers entered the two-story brick rowhouse in the 3500 block of North 13th Street at 5:15 p.m. and made straight for the basement, where traffickers were known to dispense drugs through cellar windows to customers on the street, authorities said.

Glenda Stewart tries to remember the good times she had as a child growing up in the big brick rowhouse at 1902 N. 24th St. But it's hard not to see the place and remember the bad things, too. Most of them started with an addiction to cocaine that made her desperate enough to let some Jamaican drug dealers turn her family home into a crack house. They hid guns in the walls. Stewart was afraid to come inside. Yesterday, she came back without fear to see her North Philadelphia house take on a new role.

The Pennsylvania state trooper whose investigation led to the conviction last month of a Media solicitor on fatal hit-and-run charges was suspended from duty yesterday after losing his gun in a crack house, then breaking into another home to try to get it back, authorities said. The trooper, Robert McBride, an auto accident investigator assigned to the Media station, lost his pistol and might lose his job following his arrest Thursday night. He was jailed in the Police Administration Building, awaiting arraignment on charges of burglary, aggravated assault and criminal trespass.

In her newly published mystery novel, If I Should Die, Grace F. Edwards has her lead character, Mali Anderson, go undercover in a crack house that truly lives up to its name: The Inferno. When asked in a recent interview whether she'd ever been in such a place, Edwards gasped: "God no. I'd be scared to death. " Instead, she says, she learned what it was like from parole officers who had been inside crack houses in search of their clients. And that's the way it is with If I Should Die. So realistic that at every turn you expect to hear that Edwards has encountered firsthand all she portrays.

THE HORRIBLE CASE of Linda Ann Weston and her Northeast Philadelphia dungeon has Philadelphia making international headlines again for the wrong reasons. Here's a look at some of the other crime sprees that have put the city in the negative spotlight. 1. Kensington Strangler: Antonio Rodriguez allegedly choked three women to death last November and December. 2. Kermit Gosnell: The West Philadelphia abortion doctor is awaiting trial on homicide charges in the death of a woman and seven babies under his care at his filthy Lancaster Avenue clinic.

City Councilwoman Jannie L. Blackwell stood at the foot of Markoe Street in the Mill Creek neighborhood, taking in the sight: 23 new two- and three-story brick rowhouses. Even for her, it was almost too much to believe. "We've gone from hell to heaven," Blackwell said Wednesday before a Philadelphia Housing Authority ribbon-cutting for new homes in West Philadelphia. Hell is all too fresh a memory for Blackwell and neighbors. On Lex Street, four blocks to the east, six men and one woman were gunned down in a crack house on Dec. 28, 2000, the worst mass murder in the city's modern history.

In Courtroom 801, Maurice Ragland began to shake. The drug dealer who shot him twice in the head had just been led in for a May 6 sentencing hearing. Ragland's nerves were raw. The tremors began in his shoulder, rippled to his fingers - a lingering effect of his wounds. Ragland was left for dead nearly four years ago in a puddle of blood beneath a West Philadelphia streetlamp. "I'm not dead," he told the police officer who found him. Ragland recovered - aside from the spasms - and did something seldom heard of in Philadelphia: He testified.

In Courtroom 801, Maurice Ragland began to shake. The drug dealer who shot him twice in the head had just been led in for a May 6 sentencing hearing. Ragland's nerves were raw. The tremors began in his shoulder, rippled to his fingers - a lingering effect of his wounds. Ragland was left for dead nearly four years ago in a puddle of blood beneath a West Philadelphia streetlamp. "I'm not dead," he told the police officer who found him. Ragland recovered - aside from the spasms - and did something seldom heard of in Philadelphia: He testified.

You will find the sliver of hope called the H.O.M.E. Page Cafe across the rather hangdog lobby of the Free Library. Here are directions: If you arrive before 9 a.m., ignore the drifts of litter against the wall outside on Vine Street, facing Logan Square's lovely Swann Fountain and the busy Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Climb the broad steps and pass through an off-putting turnstile, better suited for a SEPTA subway entry. Pass the reception desk, the Popular Library room, and turn right into the tall-ceilinged East Corridor where the 21st century is on sudden display: The H.O.M.

A 17-year-old pleaded guilty yesterday to attempted murder and related charges for shooting and wounding two narcotics officers trying to serve a search warrant at the East Frankford house in which he lived. In addition to two counts of attempted murder, Donyea Phillips pleaded guilty to 10 counts of recklessly endangering another person for 10 officers who were on the raid but not shot, as well as six counts involving drugs or guns. Assistant District Attorney Namratha Ravikant said that Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn Bronson set sentencing for Aug. 15. Phillips was arrested the night of Nov. 13, when more than a dozen police officers raided the house in the 2000 block of Orthodox Street where he was living, and which police believed was a crack house.

His family, friends and the police described David Atkins - a former altar boy - as an excellent employee and a devoted father to his 6-year-old son. None of them can fathom why he was gunned down early Saturday morning. "At this point, it's a mystery," said homicide Capt. Mike Costello. In the middle of the night, Atkins, 43, of the 1600 block of Staub Street in Nicetown, apparently got out of bed to answer a knock at the door. His son was sleeping, but may have awakened and witnessed part of the attack, police said.

Readers responded to this question: Violence has invaded our communities - our homes, workplaces and malls. Even our minds. What can you as an individual do in your family or your community to minimize the influence of violence, whether from guns, TV, video games, the printed word or personal interactions? Ron Tinsley Philadelphia As a former youth minister, it is obvious to me that children and youth are being underparented from the city to the suburbs. While some parents work longer hours, many teens are living in virtual and digital worlds without adult contact.

Inside a municipal courtroom yesterday, Terrence Adams' mother, Debra Washington, 50, sat forward on a bench, rocking a bit as she clutched a blue folder, the type usually given to the family of murder victims. A couple of rows away, his father, Terrence L. Adams, 45, leaned forward with his hands folded as if in prayer and propped up by the bench in front. The occasion was the preliminary hearing for Milo Thornton, 34, of the 1400 block of Fishers Lane in Philadelphia's Logan section, who is accused of gunning down Adams on July 27, 2006, during a robbery.

WE HAVE POINTED out many times that crime and violence are complex problems not given to simple solutions. So we were encouraged after reading this week's Daily News story about a church that bought a former crack house from the district attorney's office. Cornerstone Community Church plans to renovate the property at 2060 E. Allegheny Ave. and turn it into a rehabilitation and counseling center. The church paid in hard, cold cash - 100 pennies. Why is an office responsible for putting criminals behind bars selling real estate?