Getaway Car

A string of particularly violent robberies at cell-phone stores has police concerned about the safety of employees and customers. The 12 robberies at Metro PCS phone stores throughout the city have unfolded since Nov. 29 and the robbers are extremely brazen, Chief Inspector William Colarulo said. "They would order the employees to the ground and they would put the gun to their head or the knife to their head. And then they would demand access to the safe," Colarulo said. "It's a miracle that there have been no injuries as a result of these robberies.

The two men charged in the May 3 killing of police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski - one of them a boxer whose attorney said may be brain-damaged - yesterday asked to be tried separately because the defense of one might undercut the other. Gary S. Server, the attorney for Levon Warner, told Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner that he was considering a defense that Warner had brain damage that made him vulnerable to the influence of codefendant Eric DeShann Floyd. Warner, 40, was a heavyweight boxer active between 1993 and 2007, with a record of six wins, five losses and two draws.

Maybe it's time to hang up all that reverence for the movies of the '70s, the so-called halcyon days when Hollywood let filmmakers experiment with "edgy" story lines and pictures weren't vetted by the studios' marketing departments. At the very least, maybe it's time to confiscate director Gavin O'Connor and writer Joe Carnahan's copies of Serpico and Prince of the City . Gritty, jumpy and rife with cliches, Pride and Glory emits a distinct retro vibe even as its cameras swoop and jerk around the grimier precincts of modern-day New York, telling a tale of good cops and crooked cops, fathers, sons, brothers and in-laws who wear the NYPD badge with honor - or with self-interest, vengeance, and suspiciously large bank accounts.

The National Museum of Crime & Punishment, which opens today, is another in Washington's growing supply of museums that aspire to be a blend of theme park and TV show. It's even produced in cooperation with the long-running Fox hit America's Most Wanted, which will be taped in the museum's basement television studio. The museum is more fun than annoying. But not by terribly much. For $18 (plus tax) a ticket, visitors get to shoot a gun, drive a police cruiser, and appear in a police lineup.

A man with a heroin addiction who is accused of repeatedly stabbing a convenience store cashier during a robbery last week was arrested at a drug rehabilitation facility, police said. Now, police said, they are looking for the accomplice who drove the getaway car. Elias Delgado, 33, of North Philadelphia, was picked up at a rehab program Tuesday after boasting about the assault in the presence of an employee, who called police, Capt. Leonard Ditchkofsky of East Detectives said yesterday.

John DeZolt was simply kicking back on his 60th birthday yesterday when be spotted a suspicious motorist near his home in Falls Township. He kept watching and minutes later the man returned. "It looked like he was carrying the Olympic torch," DeZolt said. "He had red smoke coming out of his right hand. " The smoke was red dye exploding from a sack of stolen money from the Yardville National Bank on West Trenton Avenue, where a robber passed a note to the teller about 5 p.m. and demanded money, adding "and no one will get hurt.

Park a VW Beetle next to a Smart car, and it's not the Volkswagen you'll want to call a bug. Alongside a Smart, a Mini Cooper looks like a Maxi Cooper. Don't like to parallel park? Pull your Smart straight up to the curb. The Smart isn't much longer than some SUVs are wide. If that last point is a wee bit exaggerated, maybe a little hype is understandable. After all, this is a car some Americans have been awaiting for years after seeing them navigate the narrow byways of France, parked nose-in against a Roman curb, or serving as Tom Hanks' unlikely getaway car in The Da Vinci Code.

Park a VW Beetle next to a Smart car, and it's not the VW you'll want to call a bug. Alongside a Smart, a Mini Cooper looks like a maxi. Don't like to parallel park? Pull your Smart straight up to the curb. The Smart isn't much longer than some SUVs are wide. If that last point is a wee bit exaggerated, maybe a little hype is understandable. After all, this is a car some Americans have been awaiting for years, after seeing them navigate the narrow byways of France, parked nose-in against a Roman curb, or serving as Tom Hanks' unlikely getaway car in The Da Vinci Code . Yesterday, a steady stream of Smart enthusiasts lined up in Devon to check out the tiny cars, which were in town as part of a nationwide Smart road show that is heralding the vehicle's planned U.S. debut this January.

Two men were found guilty yesterday of a daylight street-corner shooting that left a South Philadelphia High School student dead. Immediately after closing arguments, Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart convicted Tyrik Hawkins and Tauheed Sadat, both 22, of third-degree murder and related charges in the Nov. 7, 2005, slaying of Daniel Starling, 16. Hawkins, of the 1900 block of Pierce Street in Point Breeze, and Sadat, of the 2100...

In front of at least three family members, a 55-year-old Point Breeze man was shot in the back of the head and killed late yesterday afternoon in front of his home. An unrelated 17-year-old boy, who apparently was nearby, was shot in a leg and taken to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was in stable condition, said Police Inspector Stephen Johnson of the South Division. Johnson said it was unclear if the teenager played any role in the killing of the man near his rowhouse in the 1300 block of South Carlisle Street, a narrow one-way street just west of Broad.