Parkside

The Pennsylvania grand dragon blamed outside agitators for the "pitched battle in the streets" during the Ku Klux Klan march Saturday in which a police officer was injured and six were arrested in a tiny Delaware County borough. Grand Dragon Rick Fogel, 26, also blamed the Klan's low turnout on Klansmen who couldn't find their way to Parkside, a predominantly white borough of 2,400 outside of Chester, a predominantly black city. Yet the York County resident vowed that the march to commemorate Armed Forces Day would be the first of "a long summer of (Klan)

It all started with T-shirts. Alarmed by clashes between some Korean merchants and black customers in West Philadelphia, Jason Y. Kim, a Korean businessman, persuaded one Korean store owner to donate T-shirts to Jesse Jackson's local campaign workers and the Mantua Community Center's jump-rope team. Jimmy Allen, director of Mantua Community Planners, a referral agency, said that gesture had helped him to realize that Koreans and blacks could work together. It was to Allen that Kim broached the idea of investing in some community projects.

An auto insurance company is holding a promotional event today in Parkside where it is offering 99 cents per gallon gasoline until 2 p.m. The gas event, sponsored by Infinity Insurance, will be held at the Mobil station at 1501 N. 52nd Street and there is a ten gallon limit per customer. The station is accepting cash only, the insurance company said in a news release.  

For the first time in recent memory, law-abiding residents outnumbered the drug dealers at 50th and Thompson streets, an intersection well-known for drug peddling. "They start selling drugs at about 11 o'clock in the morning, and they go into the wee hours," said Darren Brown, 30, who's lived all his life in the Parkside section of West Philadelphia. But last night, the drug dealers, whom Brown says flock here by the dozens, had to take a night off. In their place were about 70 residents who gathered to listen to anti-drug activist C.B. Kimmins, City Councilman Frank Rizzo, One Day At A Time executive director Stephen Pina and others talk about how they could rid their neighborhood of the drug vermin.

IRONIC BUT TRUE: the collapse of Mel Simon's proposed entertainment complex at Penn's Landing has provided Fairmount Park with a grand opportunity. So seize it: The Fairmount Park Commission should pave the way for the Please Touch Museum to move into - and renovate - the moldering wreck that is Memorial Hall. That would not only save the 1876 Centennial landmark but also make it a popular destination, rather than the common drive-by question: "What's that building over there?"

A 55-year-old grandmother with a warm smile, a passion for fishing, and a fierce independent streak was shot and killed yesterday while walking home from her late shift at United Parcel Service. Jeanne DeAngelo was gunned down about 4 a.m. in the 1300 block of Belmont Avenue, in front of an elementary school - just steps from her rowhouse on Leidy Avenue in the Parkside section of the city. Shot in the chest, throat and leg, she was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said DeAngelo was the victim of an apparent robbery: Her trademark red-and-white duffel bag - which family members said she carried everywhere - was missing when her body was found.

A man who was critically wounded along with former Heisman Trophy winner Michael Rozier two years ago was fatally shot yesterday when he answered the door of a Parkside home. Bart Merrill, 35, whose address was unknown, was gunned down about 10 a.m. at 1487 Greenwood Ave., Camden County Prosecutor Lee A. Solomon said. Neighbors heard the shots and called police, Solomon said. Merrill was rushed to Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival, according to Solomon.

The mother of the baby John R. Rooney shook to death said she would welcome him back into her home and marry him. Carmella Swanson, whom Rooney had been convicted of assaulting, said that she loved Rooney but that he needed to be locked up. The judge said Rooney's troubled past made such an incident inevitable - and necessitated a stiff sentence. Rooney, 34, of Parkside, was sentenced to 2 1/2 to 5 years in state prison for shaking his 10-week-old daughter to death in January.

Ku Klux Klansmen, clad in white robes and other regalia, plan to march in a tiny, nearly all-white town outside Chester on May 21, the KKK's Pennsylvania grand dragon said yesterday. State KKK leader Rick Fogel, of York County, said the gathering in Parkside was one of a series of "education and recruitment drives" intended to influence political leaders. "We're just trying to stand up for the rights of the middle-class people, the white Christian patriots of America," Fogel said.

I WOULD like to respond to the article (June 6) on vandalism on Edgewood Street in Southwest Philadelphia. I live on that block. We are living a nightmare. Letters have been sent to the mayor's office, police chief, City Council, state representatives, to no avail. Problems like this do not just go away. Calling someone the "N" word and writing it on personal property should not be taken lightly. This opens the doors to all kinds of hate crimes. This is domestic terrorism right in our own backyard.

A 27-year-old motorcyclist was killed in an accident in the city's Parkside section Thursday night, police said. The man was riding south on Belmont Avenue shortly after 7 p.m. when he was struck by a northbound red Dodge Durango making a left turn onto Parkside Avenue, police said. The motorcyclist was taken the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he later died, police said. The accident is under investigation. - Robert Moran  

Camden's Parkside neighborhood will receive a $921,900 grant for affordable housing and to develop the new Haddon Avenue Transit Village, which is to include a pharmacy, wellness center, and spa, the state Department of Community Affairs has announced. At least 60 percent of the money - from the Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit Program - must go toward housing and economic development. The remainder may be used for support services and other projects that promote neighborhood revitalization.

The next neighborhood renaissance looks like it's arriving at Parkside. There's the Please Touch Museum, a new supermarket mall and now Le Cochon Noir, an upscale barbecue restaurant with live blues and jazz as well as local art shows. Owner Jamal Parker said, "I look at Parkside as moving in the direction of Manayunk or Northern Liberties. To have a space like this directly across from Fairmount Park is an amazing opportunity - I couldn't touch a property in New York across from Central Park.

An auto insurance company is holding a promotional event today in Parkside where it is offering 99 cents per gallon gasoline until 2 p.m. The gas event, sponsored by Infinity Insurance, will be held at the Mobil station at 1501 N. 52nd Street and there is a ten gallon limit per customer. The station is accepting cash only, the insurance company said in a news release.  

State officials are scrambling to provide treatment for hundreds of South Jersey heroin addicts who rely on methadone to control their addictions, after Camden's primary methadone provider announced that it will close. The nonprofit Parkside Recovery, which runs a bustling downtown clinic and was to move to a newly renovated facility at South Jersey Port, cited financial problems. The state, which funds the facility, said it had "operational concerns" about Parkside. The announcement this week surprised the facility's nearly 40 employees and 550 clients, and raised questions about the fate of a $1.9 million state-funded plan to build a clinic for Parkside at the port.

Truckers and stevedores now move pineapples, steel and cocoa beans through the Broadway Terminal in the shadow of the Walt Whitman Bridge on Camden's waterfront. Soon, there will be a new presence on the more than 200 industrial acres of the South Jersey Port: recovering heroin addicts. Parkside Recovery, which dispenses methadone to hundreds of addicts in downtown Camden, will move to a larger space at the port under a plan given preliminary approval by the South Jersey Port Corp.

A 54-year-old Camden man killed his wife, his adult son and daughter, and an elderly relative yesterday before committing suicide in an outburst of violence whose motive baffled investigators. The shooter gunned down his four relatives with a handgun in rapid succession before shooting himself in the head after an argument about 4:30 p.m. in his house in the 1400 block of Princess Avenue, said Jason Laughlin, a spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. Neighbors identified the man as Luis M. Cruz.

Activists from Camden's grittiest neighborhood made a determined stand yesterday against plans to move a methadone clinic from the path of Cooper University Hospital's expansion to the Broadway port terminal. A dozen South Camden residents pleaded their case at the South Jersey Port Corp., urging its board of directors to reconsider a decision to lease port property to the Parkside Recovery clinic for $150,000 a year for 20 years. "It's inhumane to the customers of the clinic and the residents of Waterfront South," said Andrea Ferich, who lives on Ferry Avenue.

Volunteers with the Parkside Fire Company are trained not only to fight fires, but to rescue firefighters from other companies who are in trouble. "If a firefighter goes down, it's our job to get them out," said Thomas Cubler, Parkside's safety officer. "We never expected we would rescue our own people. " Early Saturday morning, the unthinkable happened. During a Parkside Borough townhouse fire, the second floor collapsed onto two young members of the Delaware County company, trapping them under a pile of debris, furniture and rubble.