Pharmacy Technician

SEVERAL TIMES during the Sunday morning session of Eagles rookie camp, coaches exhorted confused, hesitant players to pick up the tempo. Mental and physical fatigue were setting in, as rookies grappled with their second day in a new offense or defense. When the practice was over and players fled the sunny practice fields for the air-conditioned shade of the locker room, defensive coordinator Juan Castillo gathered three linebackers, including second-round draft pick Mychal Kendricks.

Erika E. Weigand Dougherty, 32, of Springfield, Delaware County, a pharmacy technician who battled lifelong medical problems, died Saturday of respiratory failure in Cape Coral, Fla., while visiting family. Mrs. Dougherty was born with an abnormal esophagus. For months, she was a patient at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where her surgeon was C. Everett Koop, who later became the surgeon general of the United States. At 22 months, after three major operations, she was one of the first patients at Children's allowed to go home on a ventilator.

Dr. Joseph L. Hayes, 84, of Springfield, Delaware County, an emergency-room physician, died of complications of pneumonia Friday, April 6, at home. After graduating from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1961, Dr. Hayes completed an internship at Cherry Hill Hospital. He then had a general medicine practice in Havertown. In 1969, he became an emergency-room physician at Tri-County Hospital, now Springfield Hospital. Dr. Hayes helped train many students, interns, and residents, his children said.

After months of petitioning for staff increases at the city's health centers, members of the Northeast Citizen's Health Committee were pleased when the final paperwork for the hirings was approved by the city's Finance Department. The District 10 Health Center, 2230 Cottman Ave., will be able to increase its staff of 29. A practical nurse and a pharmacy technician have been hired, said Sue Rosenthal, chairwoman of the citizens committee, and seven other hires will be made. "That should allow District 10 to provide a greater level of services to the community," said Michael Lucas, director of Family Medical Care Services for the department.

Public health advocates were relieved in April, when Health Commissioner Maurice C. Clifford promised City Council that a proposal for private operation of city health centers would not be implemented for at least a year. But now a different problem, staff losses, is stirring up the same activists, who filled several rows of Council chambers at that April hearing to plead for retention of the current public-health system. Worried about staff attrition from early retirements at the Northeast's only center, the Northeast Citizens Health Committee will meet at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to plan protests to the mayor and council, said Sue Rosenthal, chairwoman.

Patients of the Northeast's only city-run health center complained to Health Department officials Tuesday night about a chronic shortage of medicine at the center's pharmacy, and they made plans to take the tale to City Council. Barry Savitz, deputy health commissioner for public health centers, told the group that the city recognizes that the medicine shortage is "a crisis situation. " But he said that a new pharmacy distribution system now being developed should solve most of the problem.

The robbers were young and nervous and the victims didn't believe the gun was real. A tragedy of errors that led to the November killing of popular pharmacy technician Shane Kelly was detailed Wednesday at a Philadelphia preliminary hearing that ended with Ryan McManus, 20, and pal Richard Smith, 19, held for trial on murder. "I thought it was a fake gun," Maryelise Doyne, Kelly's girlfriend of 21/2 years, said of the small handgun held by the robber identified as McManus by another witness.

H IS STORY and her story could not have been more different. Damien Walto, a former city cop, told a jury Monday that he was defending himself from the woman he's accused of beating, Diane Janssen, during a gathering of friends the evening of July 17, 2010. Walto testified that Janssen had thrown a can of beer at the back of his head and smacked him, then tripped on her own feet when he pushed her away to avoid a second can. "All I did was push her to get her away from me to avoid getting hit again," testified Walto, 32, who is on trial for aggravated assault and related counts.

If there was a message yesterday for the men who have the blood of Tovoyia Owens and her unborn child on their hands, it was this: The clock is ticking. A homicide investigator said that it's only a matter of when, not if, detectives track down the two punks who attacked Owens and her boyfriend outside the Philadelphia Traffic Court building shortly before 2 p.m. Monday. Owens, who was about four months pregnant, was knocked unconscious during the fracas. An hour later, she was dead.

SEVERAL TIMES during the Sunday morning session of Eagles rookie camp, coaches exhorted confused, hesitant players to pick up the tempo. Mental and physical fatigue were setting in, as rookies grappled with their second day in a new offense or defense. When the practice was over and players fled the sunny practice fields for the air-conditioned shade of the locker room, defensive coordinator Juan Castillo gathered three linebackers, including second-round draft pick Mychal Kendricks.

Dr. Joseph L. Hayes, 84, of Springfield, Delaware County, an emergency-room physician, died of complications of pneumonia Friday, April 6, at home. After graduating from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1961, Dr. Hayes completed an internship at Cherry Hill Hospital. He then had a general medicine practice in Havertown. In 1969, he became an emergency-room physician at Tri-County Hospital, now Springfield Hospital. Dr. Hayes helped train many students, interns, and residents, his children said.

H IS STORY and her story could not have been more different. Damien Walto, a former city cop, told a jury Monday that he was defending himself from the woman he's accused of beating, Diane Janssen, during a gathering of friends the evening of July 17, 2010. Walto testified that Janssen had thrown a can of beer at the back of his head and smacked him, then tripped on her own feet when he pushed her away to avoid a second can. "All I did was push her to get her away from me to avoid getting hit again," testified Walto, 32, who is on trial for aggravated assault and related counts.

Damien Walto, a former Philadelphia police officer, told a jury Monday that he was defending himself from the woman he is accused of beating, Diane Janssen, during a gathering of friends the evening of July 17, 2010. Walto testified that Janssen threw a can of beer at the back of his head and smacked him, then tripped on her own feet when he pushed her away to avoid a second can. "All I did was push her to get her away from me to avoid getting hit again," testified Walto, 32, who is on trial for aggravated assault and related counts.

A 26-YEAR-OLD Frankford woman told a jury Thursday that former Police Officer Damien Walto was a drunken brute who snapped and slammed her face-first into the pavement of a Northern Liberties playground in 2010. "Then, he was on top of me, like I could do anything about it," a crying Diane Janssen, 26, told the jury on the first day of Walto's trial on charges of aggravated assault and related offenses. Janssen said the July 17 late-night attack at the Tip Top playground, near Front Street and Girard Avenue, appeared to be sparked by an argument she'd just had with Walto, 32. Though he often asked her out, Janssen said, she and Walto were platonic friends for about five years and had never been romantic.

The robbers were young and nervous and the victims didn't believe the gun was real. A tragedy of errors that led to the November killing of popular pharmacy technician Shane Kelly was detailed Wednesday at a Philadelphia preliminary hearing that ended with Ryan McManus, 20, and pal Richard Smith, 19, held for trial on murder. "I thought it was a fake gun," Maryelise Doyne, Kelly's girlfriend of 21/2 years, said of the small handgun held by the robber identified as McManus by another witness.

Emily Jerry was just 2 years old when she died from a medication error made by a pharmacy technician in a Cleveland hospital. She had undergone surgeries and four rounds of chemotherapy to treat what doctors said was a highly curable malignant tumor at the base of her spine. Emily's past treatments had been so successful that her last MRI showed the tumor had miraculously disappeared, her parents say. This last treatment on her second birthday was just to be sure that no traces of cancer were left inside her. Tragically, the technician mixed her final dose of chemotherapy improperly, in a saline solution that was 23 times more concentrated than it should have been.

If there was a message yesterday for the men who have the blood of Tovoyia Owens and her unborn child on their hands, it was this: The clock is ticking. A homicide investigator said that it's only a matter of when, not if, detectives track down the two punks who attacked Owens and her boyfriend outside the Philadelphia Traffic Court building shortly before 2 p.m. Monday. Owens, who was about four months pregnant, was knocked unconscious during the fracas. An hour later, she was dead.