East Camden

A young man on a sidewalk drags an empty handcart behind him. A crowd waits outside a church food pantry on a chilly winter day. And the shelves of a refrigerator are barren except for a pallid tub of margarine and a clear jug of water. This is what living in Camden without enough to eat looks like - in the digital photographs 10 city women in the Drexel University project "Witnesses to Hunger" have made. Associate professor of public health Mariana Chilton founded the project in 2008 in Philadelphia; it has since expanded to Baltimore, Boston, and Camden.

He had been playing basketball in East Camden and was walking home Monday afternoon when the bullets started flying. Jorge Cartagena, a fourth grader, was struck in the eye, collapsed to the ground, and immediately called out for his mother. "Where is my son? Where is my son?" screamed his mother, Isabel, after learning from a neighbor of the 9-year-old's shooting. She rushed from her home on Marlton Avenue toward the shooting scene. She cradled him in her lap and told him "to be strong.

Connie Williams, 72, a community activist who worked with children and police to keep her East Camden neighborhood safe, died early Saturday, May 18, of lung cancer. Ms. Williams ran after-school and summer crime-prevention programs in an effort to keep children active and away from drugs. For the last decade, she had been president of the East Side Civic Association in Camden. "It's a sad day for the city," Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson said. "Miss Connie was a mother hen to the children of East Camden.

Greg Rawls was asleep on the floor of a friend's home early Wednesday when a loud banging broke the silence. His girlfriend, who had been lying next to him, opened the door, and members of the U.S. Marshals New York/New Jersey Fugitive Task Force poured in. Roughly 36 hours after authorities say Rawls opened fire on an East Camden corner, missing his target but sending a bullet into 9-year-old Jorge Cartagena's temple - a wound doctors say...

It started in late 2011, when four high school students started holding informal mentoring sessions with younger students in Camden. Within a few weeks, the talks that Zaire Martin and three classmates were having with younger students started paying off, prompting teachers at Dudley Elementary School in East Camden to encourage the high school students to keep the meetings going. "The teachers kind of pointed it out that they actually listened to us," said Martin, 18. The mentoring group, "Child of Mine," started with those informal sessions and quickly transformed into a group that works with six seventh and eighth grade students at Dudley.

The former Sears, Roebuck & Co. store on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden started coming down in pieces Wednesday, 42 years after it closed its doors to shoppers. The work is expected to last eight weeks. On Wednesday, an excavator clawed through the rear, working toward the boulevard. A handful of spectators watched. The civic activists who had called for the building, built in 1927, to be preserved were not present Wednesday morning. For now, the facade of the neoclassical store remains in place, windows and doors boarded up. But soon, it, too, will come down, making way for a redevelopment project by the Campbell Soup Co., whose headquarters is nearby.

Joe Travis and his fellow gardeners in Morgan Village put in apple, pear, and plum trees. Across town in East Camden, Betty Louie and her neighbors planted Okame cherries. And at the Neighborhood Center in Camden's Bergen Square section, volunteers helped Beth McMillan add Japanese lilacs, red maples, and a stately Zelkova to the landscape. "We've done more than 135 varieties and 70 species in the city," says Jessica Franzini, program coordinator for the New Jersey Tree Foundation.

In an effort to add classrooms to the Knowledge A to Z (KATZ) Academy Charter School in Camden, the city Planning Board approved a proposal Thursday that would eliminate a pool in the Parkside Boys and Girls Club, which houses the school. The school wants to fill in the pool to make room for seven classrooms, bringing its total to 15. The extra classrooms could add 112 students, said Marcella Dalsey, president and cofounder of the charter. The school now has 135 students in the Parkside building and 60 at a former school in the city's Rosedale section.

Teenagers from Camden and Pennsauken hit the rails and ramps with their skateboards following the opening Friday of the Stockton Station Park and greenway project, a $10 million recreation area at the Catto Demonstration Project in East Camden. In addition to a fenced-in skateboarding area, the park - on north end of Rosedale Avenue, off Westfield Avenue - got a synthetic-turf multipurpose field, basketball courts, a baseball field, and chess tables. The park was funded through grants from the state Schools Development Authority and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Green Acres program.

A 52-year-old man was shot and killed while walking from an East Camden 7-Eleven with his wife around 10:15 p.m. Sunday. James Glover, who lived near the Federal Street store, was struck by a bullet that went through his arm and into his chest. He was pronounced dead at Cooper University Hospital. It was the second homicide of the day in the neighborhood. Garland Banks, 25, also of East Camden, was shot multiple times Sunday morning while in the entrance to the Wash Clean Laundromat on 27th Street.

In an effort to add classrooms to the Knowledge A to Z (KATZ) Academy Charter School in Camden, the city Planning Board approved a proposal Thursday that would eliminate a pool in the Parkside Boys and Girls Club, which houses the school. The school wants to fill in the pool to make room for seven classrooms, bringing its total to 15. The extra classrooms could add 112 students, said Marcella Dalsey, president and cofounder of the charter. The school now has 135 students in the Parkside building and 60 at a former school in the city's Rosedale section.

A young man on a sidewalk drags an empty handcart behind him. A crowd waits outside a church food pantry on a chilly winter day. And the shelves of a refrigerator are barren except for a pallid tub of margarine and a clear jug of water. This is what living in Camden without enough to eat looks like - in the digital photographs 10 city women in the Drexel University project "Witnesses to Hunger" have made. Associate professor of public health Mariana Chilton founded the project in 2008 in Philadelphia; it has since expanded to Baltimore, Boston, and Camden.

It started in late 2011, when four high school students started holding informal mentoring sessions with younger students in Camden. Within a few weeks, the talks that Zaire Martin and three classmates were having with younger students started paying off, prompting teachers at Dudley Elementary School in East Camden to encourage the high school students to keep the meetings going. "The teachers kind of pointed it out that they actually listened to us," said Martin, 18. The mentoring group, "Child of Mine," started with those informal sessions and quickly transformed into a group that works with six seventh and eighth grade students at Dudley.

Joe Travis and his fellow gardeners in Morgan Village put in apple, pear, and plum trees. Across town in East Camden, Betty Louie and her neighbors planted Okame cherries. And at the Neighborhood Center in Camden's Bergen Square section, volunteers helped Beth McMillan add Japanese lilacs, red maples, and a stately Zelkova to the landscape. "We've done more than 135 varieties and 70 species in the city," says Jessica Franzini, program coordinator for the New Jersey Tree Foundation.

The former Sears, Roebuck & Co. store on the Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden started coming down in pieces Wednesday, 42 years after it closed its doors to shoppers. The work is expected to last eight weeks. On Wednesday, an excavator clawed through the rear, working toward the boulevard. A handful of spectators watched. The civic activists who had called for the building, built in 1927, to be preserved were not present Wednesday morning. For now, the facade of the neoclassical store remains in place, windows and doors boarded up. But soon, it, too, will come down, making way for a redevelopment project by the Campbell Soup Co., whose headquarters is nearby.

Camden High School's past in boys' basketball is filled with stirring victories and state-championship trophies, and some of the most memorable moments in South Jersey sports history. But the Panthers' future is shrouded in uncertainty. The direction of perhaps South Jersey's most fabled athletic program was cast into doubt Tuesday night when the Camden Board of Education voted down a controversial recommendation to hire former Cherry Hill East coach John Valore as the next Camden coach.

Connie Williams, 72, a community activist who worked with children and police to keep her East Camden neighborhood safe, died early Saturday, May 18, of lung cancer. Ms. Williams ran after-school and summer crime-prevention programs in an effort to keep children active and away from drugs. For the last decade, she had been president of the East Side Civic Association in Camden. "It's a sad day for the city," Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson said. "Miss Connie was a mother hen to the children of East Camden.

Jeremy Lopez is a little guy with big dreams: He can imagine himself playing shortstop for the New York Mets or pitching for the Boston Red Sox. Lopez also is a young man with an older man's wisdom: He knows that he'll never play in the major leagues and that education is his path to a better future. The Pennsauken Tech senior might not be a great baseball player, but he's a great example to his schoolmates, his teammates, and everybody else in South Jersey sports. He's a 5-foot-1, 110-pounder who breaks up fights.

Jeremy Lopez is a little guy with big dreams: He can imagine himself playing shortstop for the New York Mets or pitching for the Boston Red Sox. Lopez also is a young man with an older's man wisdom: He knows that he'll never play in the major leagues and that education is his path to a better future. The Pennsauken Tech senior might not be a great baseball player, but he's a great example to his schoolmates, his teammates, and everybody else in South Jersey sports. He's a 5-foot-1, 110-pounder who breaks up fights.

Camden announced plans Tuesday for its first new full-service supermarket in 30 years: a 75,000-square-foot ShopRite. The supermarket, which Mayor Dana L. Redd described as an oasis, will anchor a planned 150,000-square-foot retail shopping center at the Admiral Wilson Boulevard and 17th Street in East Camden, city officials and developers said. The ShopRite would be only the second such store in the city of 77,000 people. The developer, Goldenberg Group of Blue Bell, is just starting the permitting and land-acquisition process with the city and the Delaware River Port Authority, which owns a portion of the 20 acres the project needs.