Family Friend

Smiling and waving like a homecoming queen, Bridget Golden arrived at her Northeast home last night to find more than a thousand well-wishers jamming the street, waiting to greet her. BRID-GET! BRID-GET! BRID-GET! As the crowd chanted and cheered, the wiry blonde was hoisted on the shoulders of a family friend. The crowd roared. Welcome home, Bridget. We missed you. Her arrival at 7:10 p.m. came more than 27 hours after her disappearance Sunday afternoon a block from her home, on Cottman Avenue near Cottage Street.

Ryan Kerr, 17, a Conestoga High School senior who battled cancer for five years and spoke out courageously about his experience, died Wednesday at his home in Wayne. He passed away peacefully with his family at his side, said Lisa Kaupp, a family friend. He was 12 when he fell while biking, said his mother, Cindy. Soon after, doctors discovered a rare bone cancer around one knee. The cancer spread to his lungs, despite 30 months of chemotherapy and 15 surgeries. In August, Mr. Kerr opted to discontinue treatment and let the cancer run its course.

Summoned by a lifelong desire to excel, Derek "Rudy" Valentino entered the Schuylkill on Saturday in an amateur sprint triathlon to test and push himself. The 40-year-old Prospect Park mail carrier also wanted to show his two sons that hard work gets rewarded, a family friend said. His wife and one son gathered on the riverbank to cheer his efforts in the sprint race, a shorter version of a triathlon, which involves swimming, biking, and running. But Valentino disappeared after he went into the water at 8:22 a.m. Saturday.

John Chester Krier, a New Hanover man charged with sexually assaulting young boys who considered him a family friend, has been sentenced to six to 15 years in state prison. Krier, 38, known as "Pop Pop" to the boys, was sentenced Monday by Montgomery County Court Judge Stanley R. Ott. After the hearing, as the boys scrambled around the courthouse halls, their mothers said they were relieved by the sentence. Assistant District Attorney Thomas C. Egan 3d, who prosecuted the case, called it one of the worst he had ever seen - saying it was worse than that of former Shawmont Elementary School music teacher Gregory J. DiFonzo.

People last night remembered Ken Bridges - the East Germantown man authorities believe was the eighth person to be killed by the Washington-area sniper - as the father of six, as a good neighbor, and as a longtime social activist and businessman whose abiding concern was African American economic empowerment. Speaking at a rain-shrouded news conference near Bridges' stately home on East Haines Street, family friend Gary Shepherd said Bridges' wife and their six children were "understandably shocked and saddened by this senseless event.

When Jamal Lane bounded out of a West Trenton frat house to tackle two gun-toting robbers, he thought he was protecting his friends. But his friends panicked and locked the door behind him, trapping Lane outside with his killers, police said. Seconds later, as partygoers hid safely in the Theta Chi fraternity house, shots were fired and Lane, 19, lay dead with one bullet through his heart. At Lane's Boudinot Street home in Trenton yesterday, his family spoke out against the frat brothers and others who allegedly locked him out early Friday morning.

Lonnie Williams first met Lisa Novak in a Baltimore bar on July 28 - six days before police say he fatally shot her parents in their home. Investigators still are trying to figure out what happened during those six days, police Col. Thomas Gordon said at a news conference yesterday. Meanwhile, Williams, 21, of Germantown, Md., was ordered held without bail at Gander Hill Prison on two counts each of first-degree murder and first- degree attempted murder and four counts of possessing a deadly weapon during commission of a felony.

Funeral services for Russell E. Swartz 2d, 26, who died in a boating accident last week, will be held at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Boylan Funeral Home, 10 Wooding Ave., Edison, N.J., followed at 9:30 a.m. by a Mass at St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Church in Edison. Burial will follow in Resurrection Cemetery in Piscataway, N.J. Mr. Swartz, a former star linebacker for the Rutgers University football team, was found dead Friday in the Delaware River after the boating accident near Palmyra.

BRIDGETON, N.J. - A southern New Jersey man has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for the 2004 beating death of a Connecticut man who was in New Jersey to attend a wedding. The sentence imposed Friday requires Edward Dukes, 28, of Bridgeton, to serve 85 percent of his term before being eligible for parole. Dukes pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in the death of Edward Ellison, 77, of New Britain, Conn. Prosecutors say Ellison was outside the home of a family friend in Bridgeton when Dukes confronted him on Sept.

A Deptford woman was indicted Wednesday on assault and weapons charges for allegedly beating her boyfriend's wheelchair-bound father with an ironing board, burning the man with an iron, and biting him on the neck during an argument, according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office. Dawn M. Deputy, 32, and the victim's son, Christopher J. Mood, 25, lived with Daniel Mood, 60, in Deptford, where the beating took place on June 23, officials said. The younger Mood told authorities he was outside the house during the alleged incident.