Robbery

DONTA CRADDOCK and Ivan Rodriguez were brought to tears Wednesday afternoon upon hearing that they had been found guilty of four counts of second-degree murder and would spend the rest of their lives in state prison. "Sorry, Mom, for letting you down and everything. Even though I'm going to be in for the rest of my life, I'm sorry," Craddock, 21, softly said from the wheelchair he has been confined to since the fatal car crash he caused while fleeing a robbery scene on June 10, 2009.

DEFENSE attorneys for two men charged with murdering four people with a car speeding away from an armed robbery persuaded a judge Thursday to bar the most graphic death-scene photos from the trial. The photos of the severed limbs and crushed bones of the three children and young mother killed on the sidewalk at 3rd and Annsbury streets on June 10, 2009, would serve no purpose other than to inflame jurors' passions, said attorneys for Ivan Rodriguez, 23, and Donta Craddock, 21, who are charged with four counts of second-degree murder.

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

New charges await two men with long criminal records who were shot and wounded, one critically, by Philadelphia police officers Saturday in separate confrontations. Vernon Walker, 49,was shot in the leg Saturday afternoon after he pointed a silver-colored toy gun at an officer, police said. Officers had chased him into a weedy lot after a holdup at a state liquor store in the 6000 block of Woodland Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia. The other, Sidney Clayton, also a robbery suspect, was shot eight times as he beat a police officer with his own baton in West Philadelphia.

A 31-year-old man wanted in the fatal shooting of the owner of a North Philadelphia check-cashing store during a robbery surrendered to homicide detectives, police said Friday. Eric Locke turned himself in about 8 p.m. Thursday, hours after police announced they were looking for him and released his photograph. He was charged with murder, robbery, and related offenses. Locke had been sought in the killing of Joel Blumer, 53, a married father of two from Holland, Bucks County. Blumer was shot shortly before 9 a.m. last Saturday while opening his B & R Check Cashing store at 26th and Sterner Streets by a gunman who fled with a duffel bag filled with cash, police said.

Two teenagers have been charged with killing an 87-year-old Navy veteran during an attempted robbery last week because he "did not move fast enough," police said Monday. The pair, a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, who is the alleged shooter, are also suspects in as many as five other robberies in the Cedarbrook neighborhood, authorities said, including one that occurred about 40 minutes before George Greaves was killed outside his home. The Aug. 18 slaying has stunned the quiet neighborhood where Greaves had been a fixture for decades.

A supermarket employee was shot to death last night when he scuffled with one of two holdup men during a robbery of a Thriftway store in Southwest Philadelphia, police said. The shooting occurred about 9:10 p.m., just after the store closed for the day and cashiers were turning in their receipts, police said. The supermarket is in the 5800 block of Lindbergh Boulevard. The victim was identified by police as Dennis Olivere, 34, of the 2500 block of Baynard Boulevard in Wilmington.

A PHILADELPHIA JURY Wednesday begins deliberating the degree of guilt of two men charged in the deaths of three children and a young mother killed by a speeding car that jumped a Feltonville sidewalk minutes after the defendants committed an armed robbery in June 2009. The trial of Donta Craddock, 21, and Ivan Rodriguez, 23, concluded in Common Pleas Court Tuesday with the jury hearing from the mothers and a grandmother of the victims, from a wheelchair-bound Craddock and closing arguments from the case's attorneys.

Rescuers tend to the victim of a car crash yesterday on Belmont Avenue under the Schuylkill Expressway in Lower Merion after the car collided with a suspected bank-robbery getaway vehicle. Two armed men robbed the Roxborough-Manayunk Federal Savings Bank, Ridge and Lyceum avenues. Police chased them and the three were caught at the site.

Police officers hold Randolph Givens outside a bank at 15th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, where a man grabbed some cash out of a depositor's hand yesterday afternoon and ran away. Police said cops arrested Givens, 30, of Diamond Street near 23rd, at 15th and Chestnut streets, a few minutes after the incident, and charged him with the robbery.

A PHILADELPHIA JURY Wednesday begins deliberating the degree of guilt of two men charged in the deaths of three children and a young mother killed by a speeding car that jumped a Feltonville sidewalk minutes after the defendants committed an armed robbery in June 2009. The trial of Donta Craddock, 21, and Ivan Rodriguez, 23, concluded in Common Pleas Court Tuesday with the jury hearing from the mothers and a grandmother of the victims, from a wheelchair-bound Craddock and closing arguments from the case's attorneys.

New charges await two men with long criminal records who were shot and wounded, one critically, by Philadelphia police officers Saturday in separate confrontations. Vernon Walker, 49,was shot in the leg Saturday afternoon after he pointed a silver-colored toy gun at an officer, police said. Officers had chased him into a weedy lot after a holdup at a state liquor store in the 6000 block of Woodland Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia. The other, Sidney Clayton, also a robbery suspect, was shot eight times as he beat a police officer with his own baton in West Philadelphia.

A police officer is in stable condition after being beaten with his own baton during a violent struggle Saturday morning that ended with a robbery suspect shot and wounded outside a busy West Philadelphia shopping center, police said. Around 10:30 a.m., the 19th district patrol officer, whose identity police did not yet release, pulled up to a reported attempted robbery outside of a luncheonette near the Park West Town Center shopping complex at N. 52nd and W. Jefferson Streets, according to police at the scene of the incident.

A PHILADELPHIA man who had avoided conviction in city courts, despite multiple arrests for robbery and other crimes, was sentenced on Tuesday to 37 years in a federal lockup for two gunpoint robberies in the far Northeast in December 2007 and October 2009. U.S. District Judge Anita Brody also ordered John Gassew to pay $7,194 in restitution to two victims. Gassew, 25, was found guilty in February of two robberies and of using a firearm. He was cleared of one robbery and one gun charge.

IVAN RODRIGUEZ is guilty of stealing a motorcycle at gunpoint and Donta Craddock is guilty of the same robbery and of involuntary manslaughter or vehicular homicide, but neither murdered four people killed by the speeding getaway Pontiac Trans Am minutes after the June 2009 robbery, the two defendants' attorneys told a Philadelphia jury during opening statements Wednesday. Craddock, 21, who was behind the wheel and paralyzed from the waist down during the fiery crash, sped away not because he was fleeing the robbery but because he thought that a pursuing police officer was going to arrest him on a warrant for not returning to a juvenile-detention center after Easter break, defense attorney Michael Farrell said.

A Philadelphia man who had avoided conviction in city courts despite multiple arrests for robbery and other crimes, was sentenced to 37 years in a federal lockup Tuesday for two gunpoint robberies in the far Northeast in December 2007 and October 2009. U.S. District Judge Anita Brody also ordered John Gassew to pay $7,194 in restitution to two victims. Gassew, 25, was found guilty in February of two robberies and using a firearm while committing the crimes. He was cleared of one robbery and one gun charge.

A man held in a hostage drama earlier this month has been charged with murder in a fatal shooting in West Philadelphia in April. Demetrius Young, 20, was arrested in prison and charged with shooting and killing Marcus Smith, 28, of the 5700 block of Filbert Street, at 60th and Market Streets at 3:45 a.m. on April 1, police said. Investigators have not disclosed a motive in the shooting or what led them to arrest Young. Young, of the 4200 block of Ogden Street, and two other men were arrested early May 2 after they held the owners of a Chinese restaurant and their young daughter hostage when a robbery went awry, police said.

62nd and Callowhill streets, West Philadelphia A 16-year-old boy who police believe was mistakenly shot in a hail of bullets Wednesday night in West Philadelphia died Thursday morning, police said. The teen, identified as Yasin Harvey, died at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was taken in a police patrol car after he was shot twice in the head, once in the left side of his chest and once in the left arm at 8:10 p.m. Wednesday while walking out of Koury Grocery, a corner store.

What had been a dormant trend of robbers targeting college drug-dealing operations around Philadelphia resurfaced Sunday night, when - a block from Temple University - armed men robbed a student rowhouse from which marijuana was being sold, police said. The four Temple students home at the time had left the front door unlocked, allowing the three men believed to have been watching the house to walk right in, police said. With handguns trained on them, one of the students took a robber upstairs, where the student handed over an unspecified amount of cash and drugs.

One man has been arrested and two others are being sought in a break-in robbery at a rowhouse that is home to five Temple University students. No injuries were reported in the incident 9:30 p.m. Sunday on the 1500 block of Page Street, a block from Temple's North Philadelphia campus. Police said three masked men entered through the unlocked front door and robbed the residents at gunpoint, fleeing with some marijuana, cash and cell phones. One man was later arrested about a block away, police said without providing additional details.