Getaway Car

Reprising a role he has played frequently over the last two years, mobster- turned-informant Thomas DelGiorno took the witness stand yesterday in Common Pleas Court to testify against his former boss, local mob chief Nicodemo Scarfo. This time, the story DelGiorno told was of a plot - eventually successful - to kill fellow mobster Frank "Frankie Flowers" D'Alfonso. DelGiorno testified that Scarfo ordered him to get together a squad of Mafia soldiers to eliminate D'Alfonso because he was not according Scarfo enough respect.

A shoot-out during an attempted convenience store robbery in North Philadelphia on Sunday night left one of the suspects dead on the street and the store owner in critical condition at Temple University Hospital. At around 8 p.m., according to a Philadelphia Police report, four males entered La Familia Latina, a mini-mart at Westmoreland and N. Fifth Streets, attempting to rob it. A robber about 26 years old, according to police, shot the male store owner once in the right side of the stomach.

A former employee of the Sovereign Bank office in Princeton Borough who authorities say planned last week's botched robbery was ordered held without bail yesterday. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Farkas told U.S. Magistrate Freda L. Wolfson that Harold Davila, 21, worked as a teller and customer service representative at the bank branch until recently, when he entered a guilty plea to possessing drugs within 1,000 feet of a school. He is scheduled to be sentenced on the drug charge in Superior Court in January and faces up to five years in prison for the offense.

Two men suspected in a rash of Center City holdups have been ordered to stand trial in connection with the July assault and robbery of a South Philadelphia couple. The accused bandits, one of them claiming to be a student at St. John's University in New York, were nabbed after one of the victims copied down the license plate of the getaway car. Municipal Judge Louis G. F. Retacco ordered Anthony Walker, 25, of Fontain Street near 30th, and Amit Patel, 20, of Doylestown, held for trial on robbery, assault and related charges following a preliminary hearing this week.

It sounded like balloons popping, two of them, but then everyone started screaming, "Get down!" Nicole Mammucani, a clerk at the Best Products store in Northeast Philadelphia, couldn't help but turn and look. Two men wearing ski masks, gloves and dark glasses stood at the front of the store Monday night, hammering on a jewelry case. Then four more shots. Flying glass stung her arm. Again, someone screamed, "Nicole, get down!" This time she did, but not before she saw one gunman point his weapon at a mother who was shopping with an infant and toddler.

It's guys like this who give the city a bad name, said the prosecutor. The assistant District Attorney was referring to a holdup team that preyed on people leaving the Philadelphia Zoo, and later robbed three people checking into an airport hotel. "I thought I left the animals inside the zoo," holdup victim, Robert Jeffries, said to Assistant District Attorney Emory Cole. This week, a Common Pleas Court jury convicted two South Philadelphia brothers in the robberies. A third man was convicted only in the zoo holdup.

When law enforcement agents planned a sting to see if a city prisoner could bribe his way out of custody, they chose the most conspicuous possible inmate. In a prison crowded with black men, the designated stinger was John Longendorfer, 28, a white inmate partially disabled by cerebral palsy and notorious as a con man and a braggart. The plot was so obvious - Longendorfer boasted about his plans for two weeks beforehand - that investigators figured the escape would never happen.

Two men were charged with attempted armed robbery last Wednesday after a bungled holdup attempt at a Northeast McDonald's Family Restaurant. A third suspect drove off in the getaway car, leaving his shotgun-toting, ski-masked colleagues to flee on foot, police said. Police collared two rain-soaked suspects a short distance from the McDonald's at 7901 Oxford Ave. and recovered ski masks and guns from a nearby field. Authorities were still searching for the driver yesterday.

A 69-year-old suspected drug dealer was kidnapped from in front of his West Philadelphia home by three men yesterday, held captive for two hours, beaten and robbed, police said. A suspect was arrested a short time later. The victim, Stazola Anthony, was in stable condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. His alleged assailants attracted police attention when they ran a red light in their getaway car after they left Anthony in his 1988 Cadillac at 37th and Spruce streets, police said.

Richard Everett of Philadelphia will probably never be compared to Willie Sutton, the infamous bank robber of the 1930s. FBI agents and Philadelphia police arrested Everett, 21, at his home in the 3100 block of Wharton Street early yesterday after his identification was found in a wallet in the getaway car shortly after the Equity National Bank branch in Lawnside was robbed Tuesday, police said. Everett has been charged with robbing the bank, at 305 White Horse Pike, of $16,000.