Limo

IN THE FALL of 2010, limousine-company operator Bassam Salaheldein wanted help. And, as federal prosecutors tell it, he was willing to bribe to get it. Salaheldein, 40, of Rhawnhurst, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to conspiracy to commit bribery. He could face up to five years in a federal lockup when he is sentenced Nov. 27. The government's plea memo said he wanted the manager of the Philadelphia Parking Authority's taxi-enforcement division to let him select his vehicles to be inspected, and to "pass" vehicles unfit to be driven and a driver who had failed a licensing exam.

The defense lawyer used Eagles green to win the murder case. The green shirt of Eagles running back Herschel Walker. Attorney Brian McMonagle said witnesses who saw limo driver Henry Speller, 37, shot and killed at 5th and Cantrell streets last Aug. 26 said the gunman wore an Eagles shirt with Walker's number 34 on it. "But my client was wearing a black shirt that night," said McMonagle. "This is a case of mistaken identity. " So, despite two eyewitnesses who swore Herman Clark, 21, was the killer, a jury acquitted him. "The two witnesses who said my guy was the killler were inside the limo at the time of the shooting," McMonagle said.

SAN FRANCISCO - Ten women - some of them in their 90s - escaped unharmed from a limousine that began smoking and caught fire Sunday in Northern California. The women were celebrating one of their 90th birthdays and were in the vehicle outside the birthday woman's home when white smoke drifted out of the partition between the driver's compartment and the passenger compartment, Mary Chapman, one of the passengers, said yesterday. The limousine was idling, but the doors were open. Chapman, 63, said she got out and the other women - some of whom relied on walkers and canes - followed with help from each other and a caregiver.

Police said Wednesday they arrested a man and a teen in the slaying of a limousine driver Monday night in the city's Feltonville section. Christopher Conway, 22, of Hunting Park, and a 15-year-old boy were charged with murder, robbery, and related offenses in the fatal shooting of Sabastian Nunez Suarez, 52, in the 4900 block of Bingham Street. Suarez, of Kensington, was shot in the head while sitting in the driver's seat. - Robert Moran

Police are searching for the driver of a limousine in a hit-and-run accident this morning that critically injured a four-year-old boy. The boy was struck about 8:20 a.m. on the 1600 block of Pratt Street in the city's Frankford section. The silver Lincoln Town Car that hit the boy stopped for a few seconds then sped away, police said. The car is believed to be a 2004 model with tinted rear and passengers windows and a tinted sunroof. The first two letters on the plate are believed to be LM, investigators said.

The stock market's down, oil prices are up, and Ali Shirazi's limousines just keep rolling along. Not that running a limousine company is easy in these recessionary times. It's not. Shirazi worries, worries, worries. About competitors ("From New Jersey! From outside the city, King of Prussia and Warminster!"), about his insurance ("Thirteen thousand dollars on each car. In New Jersey, they don't pay that"), about the cars themselves ("I can't park this on the street and leave it. There would be nothing left in half an hour")

There's nothing quite like that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you just know that you've lost something important. It happens to people all the time - especially travelers. Some folks leave a favorite T-shirt behind in a hotel room. Others drop a set of keys at the airport. Just ask, ahem, President Obama. Seems the big guy lost a magnetic presidential seal that was affixed to the side of his limousine as he wrapped up a fundraising visit to Philly on Thursday.

LETTER-writer Fred Whittman wonders why it can take an hour to get out of the parking lot at a major sporting event. I rarely have that problem. Most of the time my friends and I enjoy a leisurely stroll to our stretch limo. It's the longest stretch limo in the world, so Mr. Whittman, and anyone else, for that matter, is more than welcome to join us. We travel quickly and efficiently, several yards underneath one of the longest straight streets in North America. It's easy to find, with a high-vis orange paint scheme.

Before anyone spoke of a limousine, there was talk of solutions. The solutions for improving the Camden Housing Authority, which the federal government took control of in August, included meetings between new agency officials and long-frustrated tenant leaders and agency employees. "I am extremely optimistic with the resident support that I have received," Brenda Drain-Williams, the transitional executive director, told Kevin E. Marchman, the nation's top public housing official, during an agency meeting at Mickle Towers last week.

It's hard to blend into the scenery in a white stretch limousine, but that didn't discourage somebody from stealing one last week, and leaving the rightful driver in the lurch. The 1986 Lincoln Continental limo, valued at $20,000, was stolen while it was parked in front of a home in the Centurion Woods area of Berlin Township last Thursday night, police said. It belonged to Black Tie Limousine of Cherry Hill. "Whoever booked the limo gave the limo service a name and address to use and a phone number," said Berlin Township Officer Vince DeMatteo.