Getaway Car

One minute, Michael Danner was bottle-feeding his infant daughter in the living room of their upper Bucks County home. The next, Danner and the baby were on a high-speed, terrifying ride with two armed robbers who had invaded their house, commandeered Danner's car, and forced father and child to go with them. "They never had any regard for us," Danner, 33, recalled yesterday in Bucks County Court. "They wouldn't even let me put my 5-month-old daughter in a car seat. " Danner spoke of the May 8 nightmare during an emotional hearing in which his abductors received long state prison terms for robbery, kidnapping, conspiracy and other crimes.

An attempted bank robbery in Mayfair yesterday morning erupted into a gun battle when police exchanged fire with two of the suspects, authorities said. Three men attempted to hold up the M&T Bank in the 7100 block of Frankford Avenue, near Princeton Avenue, when police in plainclothes who had been working an unrelated detail noticed suspicious activity in the area, said Capt. Benjamin Naish, a police spokesman. One officer, in plainclothes, entered the bank about 10:25 a.m., saw part of the robbery, and was ordered to the floor by the robbers, Naish said.

One witness suspected something was wrong even before a robbery turned fatal in East Frankford. He jotted down a description of the getaway car and quickly gave it to police. Police, in turn, were prompt. Within a half-hour, two men wanted in the fatal shooting of Julio Brito, 51, a grocer known to give his customers a break when they were short on money, were in custody. By the end of the day on Monday, police had charged convicted felons Jorge Olivera, 42, of the 4600 block of Lesher Street in East Frankford, and Carlos Rivera, 35, of the 200 block of Birch Street in Fairhill, with murder, robbery and related offenses.

A mid-morning gun battle following a bank robbery in South Philadelphia yesterday left three officers injured, a woman who had been inside her house nearby with a gunshot wound to the leg, and a robbery suspect dead. The robbery suspect, who had been hiding in the getaway car, released a barrage of bullets, with the first one aimed at veteran Officer Ronald Jann. Jann leaned back as the bullet skimmed his upper lip and damaged his front teeth without causing serious injury, Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson said.

As police were racing Thursday afternoon to catch the man who they said killed Officer Gary Skerski, their number-one suspect got a tip: Police were closing in. He kissed his sister goodbye and left her East Germantown apartment armed with two pistols, police said. Outside, police were watching a gray Volvo SUV they thought was the getaway car used in the Frankford bar robbery in which Skerski was slain. Solomon Montgomery, 23, of North Philadelphia, got into the Volvo, but instead of making a clean getaway, he crashed into two police cars, got out, and started running.

There's no need to fear, Vince Fumo is here! (Apologies to Underdog.) Police in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., credit the Pennsylvania state senator with foiling a purse-snatching last Saturday on fashionable Las Olas Boulevard. Chasing down a woman who had grabbed an elderly customer's purse in a pharmacy parking lot, Fumo planted himself in the path of the thief's getaway car and yanked open a door, according to the police report. Other witnesses also swarmed the gray BMW sedan before the purse was tossed on the pavement, and the car sped away.

Philadelphia's finest were caught by surprise yesterday morning when a burglary suspect - handcuffed and in custody in the back of a police cruiser - drove off with the car while officers were standing nearby. The police car was found about a mile away, at 16th and Sparks Streets in the city's Ogontz section, though the handcuffed man was not, said Officer Yolanda Dawkins. It all started about 7 a.m., when police responded to a burglary in the 1500 block of 68th Avenue in West Oak Lane, Dawkins said.

The man police say gunned down a 16-year-old South Philadelphia student last month has a tattoo on his neck that reads Killa. On his left arm is another tattoo that reads how long will they mourn me. His right arm has a picture of a skull wearing a hooded sweatshirt, with the words so much pain. Police say the man who sports those tattoos - Tyrik Hawkins, 21, of the 1900 block of Pierce Street - is the triggerman who killed Daniel Starling, a 10th grader who lived on South 24th Street, in a drive-by shooting Nov. 7. "We have him identified as the shooter in this case," Detective Chief Inspector Joseph Fox said yesterday.

As one-man crime sprees in this city go, this one didn't go far. The spree began about 8:30 a.m. Thursday, when a man jumped the counter at Friendship Pharmacy in the 3300 block of Cottman Avenue in Mayfair and pulled a gun on the 63-year-old pharmacist. "Give me all the drugs," he demanded. After getting $100,000 worth of narcotics, the robber fled, and the pharmacist chased him to get the tag number of the getaway car, police said. Problem was, there was no getaway car. So the robber tried to hijack a truck - from an off-duty police officer who was driving his children to school.

With his pockets stuffed with more than $3,000 in cash and a "getaway car" waiting patiently in the bank parking lot, police say Robert Kenneth Marino was almost free. But the car he used to flee the Upper Darby Commerce Bank that he was charged yesterday with robbing turned out to be easy to spot, police said. Marino, 50, who was arraigned bedside at Delaware County Memorial Hospital after he complained of chest pains during his arrest, was caught cruising in a cab, spotted in traffic by a Lansdowne Borough police officer who heard descriptions of Marino and the cab dispatched across police radios.