James Burns

A mistrial was declared yesterday after a jury deadlock in the murder trial of Derrick Pratt, 19, charged with killing two teenagers and wounding two others in a revenge attack outside a West Philadelphia movie theater Sept. 2. Killed in the attack were Darren Norwood, 19, and Terence Ryans, 18, lifetime friends and neighbors from Southwest Philadelphia who were struck by bullets intended for somebody else. Two other teenagers - including the alleged target of the attack - were wounded.

Seven-year-old Erica Pratt was an incidental victim, not the original target, of a plot to extort $150,000 from her family. Any of the Pratt family members, even Erica's grandmother, in whose house the little girl lives, would have been fine, alleged kidnapper Edward Johnson told detectives in an extensive statement given shortly after his arrest. He had been cruising past the Pratt house in the 6000 block of Kingsessing Avenue for two weeks in hopes of grabbing someone, authorities said Johnson told them in the statement, which has not been made public.

The minor-league Camden Riversharks plan to announce this morning that the team will play this season, thanks to three fellow Atlantic League owners who will take over the financially struggling baseball club, officials familiar with the negotiations said last night. The waterfront team's future had been in doubt since it defaulted on a $9 million Sovereign Bank loan after the death of Sharks owner Stephen R. Shilling, who had poured his own money into keeping the club afloat. The Sharks faced bankruptcy and foreclosure on Campbell's Field while a refinancing plan was being held up by the Delaware River Port Authority.

The two white men from Elmwood mumbled a lot yesterday on the witness stand and their voices were so low the judge complained he couldn't hear them at times. Still, the gist of their testimony was clear. Vince Callahan, 20, and Thomas O'Donnell, 22, told a jury yesterday that George Stewart agreed with them to set fire last year to an unoccupied house where a black family had lived briefly, to keep blacks out of their neighborhood. Stewart, 23, who is on trial in U.S. District Court on charges of conspiring to violate the civil rights of the black family and destroying a government-owned home, was the one who lit the match, they insisted.

One victim was an 8-year-old lemonade stand operator trying to make some extra cash for her out-of-work dad. The latest victim was an 82-year-old woman walking to a hair appointment. Yesterday, police caught up with Brian James Burns - who they say stole the money box from Ami Reader's Gloucester Township lemonade stand Saturday - after he allegedly knocked the elderly woman to the ground and stole her purse in Haddon Township. Burns, 30, of Gloucester Township, was charged with assault and robbery in Haddon Township and with two counts of theft in Gloucester Township - one for the lemonade stand incident and the other for a purse snatching reported last Friday.

On a warm Saturday last September, Ami Reader, 8, and her sister Tammi, then 4, decided to make some extra money by selling lemonade on the front lawn of their home in Blackwood, N.J. They didn't know their harmless endeavor into entrepreneurship would end with the fame and fortune that's been bestowed on them. All because they got robbed of $30 by a junkie looking for drug money. When word got out about the girls' misfortune, calls from all over the country flooded the Reader household.

It's tough to win playoff games. It's tough to pick them, too. The envelope, please:   Friday Rancocas Valley (6-2) at Millville (8-0), 7 p.m. The Thunderbolts are hosting their first playoff game since 1998 at historic (and recently resodded) Wheaton Field. The Red Devils are a bit of a mystery with all those games against Mercer County teams. Millville has South Jersey's leading rusher in Alquann Jones. Pick: Millville, 24-14.

ARE WE ready for a candid conversation about the circumstances surrounding the Erica Pratt kidnapping? I seriously doubt it. I tried on the radio the other night and it only took about 10 minutes until a caller used the R-word to describe me and what I had to say. (Perish the thought that a white guy should offer an opinion on a crime where both victim and perpetrator were black.) The injection of the R-word is usually all it takes for most -but not me -to end the discussion.

It's tough to win playoff games. It's tough to pick them, too. The envelope, please:   Friday Rancocas Valley (6-2) at Millville (8-0), 7 p.m. The Thunderbolts are hosting their first playoff game since 1998 at historic (and recently resodded) Wheaton Field. The Red Devils are a bit of a mystery with all those games against Mercer County teams. Millville has South Jersey's leading rusher in Alquann Jones. Pick: Millville, 24-14. Triton (7-1)

For local artist James Burns, creating a mural depicting the emotions surrounding suicide hits close to home. "Suicide is not just about ending one person's suffering," Burns said. "What people don't realize is that it starts a whole chain reaction of sorrow for those who are left behind. " Burns, 37, is head artist on the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program's latest project, "Finding the Light Within," at 119 S. 31st St. The painter was denied the opportunity to know his grandfather because of his untimely death, and while working on the two-year project, he lost friends from graduate school and high school months apart.