Getaway Car

Jack Krill went to Valley Forge Mall Friday morning to get a new battery for his mother's watch. He ended up thwarting an outlandish criminal caper, in which police say an armed gang set fire to a school to divert attention while the gang robbed a bank. "I was just glad to able to help out," he said. "I didn't give it a second thought. " Krill, 53, now lives in Alaska. He served as a borough councilman and fire chief here before moving in 1983. He sprang into action after a man ran up to him in the parking lot, screaming that the mall's First Union Bank branch was being robbed.

Eight-year-old kidnap victim Erica Pratt took the witness stand with a big smile yesterday in a crowded courtroom in the Criminal Justice Center, but soon the engaging little girl in the pink pants suit turned shy and then glum. Despite a prosecutor's gentle efforts to ask her about the ordeal in which she was snatched off the street July 22 and held for $150,000 ransom, Erica was unable to identify James Burns, the man on trial in Common Pleas Court charged with her abduction.

A man who allegedly drove the getaway car in a March 24 murder-for-hire at a Chinese restaurant in Grays Ferry was ordered Wednesday to stand trial for murder. Marcus C. Pough, 25, is charged with murder, possession of a prohibited firearm, and related charges in a preliminary hearing before Municipal Court Judge Patrick F. Dugan. Formal arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 7. The charges stem from the March 24shooting death of Damon G. Stafford, 20, at the Twin Dragon Chinese restaurant.

A 23-year-old Chester man who drove the getaway car after an execution- style slaying on the streets of Chester has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a Delaware County judge. Leroy Ponzo, convicted of first-degree murder by a jury in October, was given the mandatory life sentence on Monday by President Judge William R. Toal Jr. Assistant District Attorney John B. Lynch said Ponzo, of the 500 block of Norris Street, was convicted as an accomplice in the killing of 21-year-old Calvin "Butter" Walls, who was gunned down by James Worley in the 600 block of Edwards Street on March 18, 1989.

A burned-out police car sits in a street in Mikkeli, Finland, after the explosion of a bank robber's getaway car. The robber killed himself and a hostage yesterday by blowing up the car while it was parked in a town plaza. Two other hostages who had just escaped from the car were injured. The unidentified gunman robbed a suburban Helsinki bank Friday and initially took 12 hostages.

Police shot and killed one of two Montgomery County bank-robbery suspects in Chester County yesterday morning after a chase that ensued when the getaway car was stopped for speeding. Police said the pair, tentatively identified as Christopher Butler, 30, and Nicole Lee, 24, both of Philadelphia, robbed a Harleysville National Bank branch in Royersford about 9:15 a.m. Witnesses told police that a man with a mask, gloves and gun went to a teller and demanded that the vault be opened.

Borough police were working with the FBI and the county Criminal Investigation Division yesterday to solve a daring armed robbery on Monday at the PNC Bank at 38 N. Lansdowne Ave. Investigators were pursuing several leads, Sgt. Robert O'Donnell said. The three men, each armed, entered the bank shortly after 9 a.m. A Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, carried by one of the men, was found in an abandoned getaway car. The robbers shot out two surveillance cameras and took an undisclosed amount of cash, police said.

A doughnut bag left in an abandoned getaway car may offer police clues as to the identity of two robbers - one armed with a machine gun - who held up two employees in the Hidden Valley apartment complex' rental office yesterday, police said. A manager and secretary were in the office in the 700 block of Cherry Tree Road about 3:30 p.m. when the robbers entered and demanded money. No one was injured, police said, and the robbers escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash. The pair ditched their getaway car in another part of the complex, leaving behind a bakery bag and a McDonald's cheeseburger wrapper, said Police Chief William T. Robinson.

FBI officials confirmed yesterday that they were checking to determine whether there was a connection between the two armored car robberies in the area Monday morning. In Mount Holly, a gunman shot and robbed an armored car courier at 9:43 a.m. in an Acme supermarket, leaving him critically wounded. Serge Oros, 23, of Newtown, Pa., a courier for Brooks Armored Car Service Inc., was shot three times with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, once in the face and twice in the chest. He remained in critical condition in the trauma unit of Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center in Camden last night.

A young gunman grabbed a bag full of cash from a bar owner outside a bank, was shot in the chest by an off-duty narcotics cop, and then jumped on the hood of an accomplice's car for a wild 16-block ride into North Philadelphia yesterday. As the wounded robber held onto the getaway car - and the money bag - the cop jumped into his own car and took off in pursuit. And when the gunman finally rolled off the hood, the cop was there to apprehend him. The accused robber, 19-year-old Melvin Leslie of North Philadelphia, was in serious condition at St. Joseph's Hospital.