Police Car

A South Philadelphia man was shot in the hand by Upper Darby police last night after he rammed his pickup truck into an unmarked cruiser. The man, whose name was not released, was apparently trying to free his friend, who had been arrested by a pair of detectives, said Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood. The bizarre episode started to unfold about 6 p.m., when Upper Darby detectives and Philadelphia police ventured to Winton Street near 3rd, in South Philly. There, Chitwood said, two of his detectives arrested a man who was wanted on domestic-violence charges.

Robert Wright never got to finish his french fries and his Burger King double hamburger Friday night. He did, however, get to wear them. It seems that Wright, 19, of North Carolina, who police said was legally drunk at the time, was so busy eating his midnight snack while driving down Pennsylvania Avenue that he didn't notice the borough police police vehicle stopped in the road. Until it was too late. "He was driving while he was eating, and he didn't have his hands where they should have been," said Borough Police Cpl. Gene Ross.

A handcuffed prisoner made a brazen escape from narcotics officers yesterday in Southwest Philadelphia, stealing their police cruiser and driving it several blocks before ditching it and vanishing, authorities said. The episode sparked a massive police search of Mount Moriah Cemetery, which sprawls across Cobbs Creek into Delaware County. Detectives said the man was arrested about 1:15 p.m. at 65th Street and Greenway Avenue on suspicion of selling crack. Two uniformed Narcotics Strike Force officers handcuffed the man, identified as Dannell Cash, 21, of Willingboro, and placed him in the back of their marked car. The vehicle has no protective wire separating the front and back seats, police said.

A township couple and their 11-month-old daughter were killed yesterday and another daughter - a 3-year-old - was critically injured when their compact car collided with a police cruiser responding to a report of a burglary. Police said the family's car apparently pulled out in front of the police car, which had its siren on and lights flashing. The driver of the car, Walter Lassiter, 30, who worked at the PX store at Fort Dix, and his wife, Wendy, 32, who recently became a supervisor at the fort's mess hall, were pronounced dead at the scene.

A martial-arts expert who escaped from a moving police car in May by diving through a window he had smashed with his head has been arrested in Florida and charged as a member of a sophisticated South Jersey burglary ring, officials said yesterday. Taleon Goffney, 24, of Camden, who had been freed after posting bail in May, was arrested Sunday and charged with several counts of burglary, theft and conspiracy. Among other offenses, he also was charged with attempted murder on allegations he beat the owner of the R&R Bar in Penns Grove, Salem County, during a July 12 break-in.

A preliminary police investigation indicates that a police officer was traveling more than 43 miles an hour in a 25-m.p.h. zone when his car struck and killed an 11-year-old boy in Winslow Township on Oct. 23. A police report of the accident was made available yesterday by Robert and Kathleen Farrar, parents of John "Jack" Farrar, who was riding his bike on Davis Avenue when he was hit by the police car driven by Winslow Patrolman Anthony Tomasello,...

Although the police car looks and performs like any other, something is different. It must be under the hood. To save a little money and reduce air pollution in Marcus Hook, officials have joined forces with the Sun Co. to convert one of the three borough police cars to propane fuel. The alternative fuel manager at Sun Oil, Helen Doherty, said that propane fuel is among the cleanest of alternative fuels and is less volatile than gasoline. Borough Manager Bruce Dorbian said he got the idea of using an alternative fuel for a borough police car after reading an article about the Clean Air Act of 1990.

Two teenagers in town to visit their big sister were killed yesterday when a police car responding to a Center City robbery slammed into the family minivan carrying the two youths, their brother, sister and mother. Dennis Johnson, 18, and his 13-year-old brother Ramon Brooks died shortly after the 4 p.m. accident despite frantic attempts by passersby, including a nurse who tended to the youths while rescue personnel were en route. Ramon's twin brother, Raymond, was in stable condition last night at Allegheny University Hospitals/Hahnemann.

As robberies go, it was supposed to be simple. Catherine Spatzer would go to the Acme at West Chester Pike and Church Lane, Marple Township police said, and steal the purse of the first woman she saw. Her first mistake, police said, was the target she picked: the mother-in- law of a police officer. After that, said Lt. Frank Dunn, it got a lot more complicated, with the 32-year-old Glen Mills resident being pursued into an appliance store, stealing a police car, leading officers on a foot chase, and finally winding up in Delaware County Prison on $50,000 bail.

A hapless great blue heron was surviving on a wing and a prayer aftercolliding with a Radnor police car early yesterday. The gawky, four-pound bird, with a wingspan of about five feet, was inshock and in need of surgery for a broken wing after the accident on a snowyLancaster Avenue in Wayne. Animal rescue workers were reserved about the prognosis for the blue-graybird, which police said landed right in front of the cruiser about 5 a.m. "It's hard to say how he'll do," said Arthur Greene, a volunteer from theSchuylkill Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.