Crack House

There was no ceremony to mark the sealing of the building at the corner of 52d and Arch Streets yesterday. But perhaps it was for the better. If it hadn't been for the luck of the draw, the building that once housed one of the most successful black businesses in Philadelphia would have had the distinction of being the 1,000th structure to be sealed under Mayor Goode's program to rid neighborhoods of crack houses. Minutes earlier, at an abandoned house a half-block up the street, Mayor Goode and other city officials held a news conference to announce the sealing of the building that did get the distinction of being the 1,000th crack house sealed.

After getting high, a Coatesville crack house operator got pummeled by one of his regulars, according to testimony during an assault trial. Last night, a Chester County Court jury convicted Mark Allen, 37, of Coatesville, of aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. The jury, which deliberated for three hours, acquitted him of attempted theft, robbery, terroristic threats and criminal conspiracy. Allen, who has been convicted previously of robbery and aggravated assault, will be sentenced by Chester County Court Judge William P. Mahon at a later date.

A Bucks County man told police that a robber cornered him in a vacant house in the city's Frankford section yesterday, stole his car and cash, and fled after torching the building. It was one of the stories told by Frederick Fredson, 49, of Langhorne, to explain what he was doing in the building, described by neighbors as a crack house. Police said Fredson told firefighters at the scene of the 10:30 a.m. blaze that two armed robbers had carjacked him at Church Street and Torresdale Avenue in the city's Wissinoming section at 8:30 a.m. yesterday.

In a faded photograph he's a smiling boy in a powder blue tuxedo on a Caribbean cruise ship. Duane Clark, 35, grew up the only child of a dance teacher and a postal worker, striving for the American dream of suburban tree-lined streets, big backyards and exotic vacations. But in a seedy West Philadelphia crack house, on a rundown street where prostitutes sell their bodies for dope while johns sit on crumbling porches, Clark crossed paths with a teen-ager who brought him to the murky depths of hell - a kid named Maurice "Barney" Williams, age 13. The encounter brought a violent conclusion to a life of opportunity and despair.

Three people were killed and two others were wounded early yesterday in a thunder of gunfire during a robbery at a North Philadelphia home, police said. Neighbors told cops the residence was a crackhouse, but police said they found only one packet of crack cocaine in the home. Police believe that it may have been a place where drug money was delivered and that the money may have been a robbery motive. Shortly before 1 a.m. yesterday, four men entered the house on West Diamond Street near 29th armed with semiautomatic weapons.

A cop and a neighbor yesterday battled smoke and fire to save a 22-month- old baby and her family, who were squatting in what neighbors called a city-owned crack house in North Philadelphia. At least six adults and the baby survived the one-alarm fire on Master Street near 24th. The fire, reported at 10:12 a.m. and under control 16 minutes later, was being investigated by the fire marshal's office. Fire officials said they found crack vials inside. The baby, Chawnee Washington, was treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Three people, one of them apparently the niece of basketball great Wilt Chamberlain, were blasted to death yesterday in a reputed crack house in West Philadelphia. Real estate records indicate the house, on Walnut Street near 61st, is owned by Chamberlain. Six hours after the slaughter, police arrested a next-door neighbor and said he apparently was hunting the paroled murderer of his son. But the target fled out a window, and the gunman killed three innocent people with a high-powered hunting rifle, cops said.

They're just kids, but their games are deadly. They hang out in crack houses, play with guns and cut school. Last Thursday, one of the gang, Latoya Brown, 14, ended up with a bullet in her head. Yesterday, her accused killer and secret boyfriend, Donald Williams, 13, was held for trial. The baby-faced boy, who spent most of his preliminary hearing with his head on the table crying, will be tried as an adult. "He said he shot Latoya by accident," testified Julian Beaufort, 14, who cut school to hang out in an East Germantown crack house with his buddy Williams.

It's quieter now on a block of modest rowhouses near 27th and Tasker Streets in Grays Ferry, where a neighborhood feud smoldered for five years. But by the time things came to a head the other week, two men had died, another had fired a bullet in the air in apparent frustration and neighbors up and down the street had begun to question whether anybody in City Hall cared. The flashpoint was a house that, according to neighbors and police, had become a haven for drug addicts and convicts.

The asthma medication for her 6-year-old daughter - gone. The money kept in a safe to pay rent - burned. Her husband's car - charred by flames. All that was left after a rapidly spreading Fourth of July fire swallowed her North Philadelphia home, Gloria Fuentes said, was a Bible. The flames didn't even touch it. "I am so upset I can't sleep. We don't know what to do," said Fuentes, who lived next door to an abandoned building investigators said was the origin of a two-alarm fire that started around 3:50 a.m. The fire claimed four lives and destroyed seven homes and three cars on the 3700 block of North Franklin Street.