Street Fight

A Philadelphia man has been charged with homicide in connection with a March 27 street fight in Darby Borough that resulted in the death of another man 10 days later. A warrant was issued April 7 for the arrest of Lamont Walker, 20, of the 3000 block of Dauphin Street, and he was arrested Friday. A police affidavit gave this account: At 11 p.m. March 27, Walker and Jeffrey Branche, 42, of the 2000 block of West Ninth Street, Chester, were fighting at 10th and Center Streets.

Heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has lost his first fight as a professional boxer. Mitch Green, a former heavyweight contender, scored a TKO over Tyson early yesterday morning when the reigning boxing king sustained a broken right hand during a street fight in New York City. No refs. No judges. No gloves. A lot of mouth. A few witnesses. And conflicting reports. Tyson appeared at a news conference wearing a knuckles-to-elbow length cast, after suffering a hairline fracture of the third metacarpal of the right hand.

Jim Courter - with wide grin, bright red tie and baby-blue shirt with sleeves rolled up - jogged from corner to corner, greeting people along the route of the 32d annual Labor Day parade in this working-class Middlesex County community. "You're good-looking; I'll vote for you," said Eleanor Halscheid, a retired nurse from nearby Middlesex Borough. "He's certainly got a lot of energy," said Henry Essins, a warehouse foreman from Plainfield. "I like that. " In all, Courter, the Republican candidate for governor, must have logged nearly five miles down Plainfield Avenue, past the row homes on Church Street and into Veterans Memorial Park, where he ate hot dogs and mingled with the holiday crowd.

Another Friday night, another "Game of the Year. " It was Council Rock's turn to try to tame Central Bucks West, 6-0 and on a 25-game winning streak, Friday night in Doylestown. It was a game between two of the three top-ranked teams in Southeastern Pennsylvania, league and neighborhood rivals, with a league title and possible state playoff berth on the line. "This was a street fight like I've never seen before," the Bucks' Rob Swett said after another punishing night of playing a full 48 minutes in his team's 9-0 victory over Council Rock.

The West Chester police officer who struck Jorge Figueroa in the head with a nightstick, possibly contributing to Figueroa's death, apparently violated department policy in his use of the stick. According to the West Chester Police Department's procedure manual on deadly force, the nightstick must be used a "defensive tool," and "blows to the head and/or face will not be considered defensive tactics by the department. " But a police spokesman said there were extenuating circumstances in this case, because the officer was under attack and because the blow to the head was an accident.

The brother of a North Philadelphia woman killed across the street from her home Tuesday night was charged yesterday in connection with her death, as was one of the men he was allegedly shooting at. The shootings were over a fight between a daughter of the victim and another young woman who had been feuding, authorities said. Bethzaida Soto Diaz, 39, mother of five and grandmother of three, was shot once in the face after she tried to break up a fight between her relatives and other people along the 500 block of West Westmoreland Street.

It had been nearly five years since St. Joseph's and Rutgers had gone at it on a basketball court. Yet the way the players snarled at and elbowed and shoved one another at the Palestra last night, they appeared to be two teams that had been sharing the same crowded dressing room for too long and had gotten on each other's nerves. In the end, though, it was the Hawks who went home feeling as if they had a score to settle. Even though St. Joseph's had two chances to take the lead or send the game into overtime in the final seconds, Rutgers (6-1)

The assault on a black Grays Ferry family whose windows and front door were smashed was not a case of whites attacking blacks. It was just a street fight, started when Raheem Williams and his cousin Warren Williams picked a fight with a man leaving a beef-and-beer party, defense attorneys argued yesterday. The Williams' teens picked the fight long before whites used racial slurs, argued attorneys for seven of the nine white men on trial, charged with ethnic intimidation and with assaulting Annette Williams, 34, and her son, Raheem, and nephew, both 18. Earlier yesterday, Mark Layden, 34, the defendant who allegedly started the brawl that ended with an angry white mob on the Williamses' porch, testified that he did not start the fight - Raheem William did. Layden said he walked out of St. Gabriel's church hall, where the party was held, and encountered Raheem Williams near 30th and Dickinson Streets.

There was no evidence that it happened, but no one would have been surprised if coach Ken Hitchcock had stood Kim Johnsson in the middle of the room during yesterday's team meeting and used him as Exhibit A for ratcheting up the Flyers' emotions for tonight's Game 3 against the Ottawa Senators. The nasty gashes above and below Johnsson's right eyebrow, carved by the stick of the Senators' Martin Havlat during the Flyers' 2-0 win Sunday night in Ottawa, certainly got Keith Primeau's blood boiling.

ON NOV. 21, 2009, William Panas Jr. was just being a "wiseass" when he dared off-duty Philadelphia cop Frank Tepper to shoot him during a Port Richmond street fight, a city prosecutor told a jury yesterday. "You're not going to shoot anybody," Panas, 21, said upon seeing Tepper point a Smith & Wesson 9mm semiautomatic handgun at him, Assistant District Attorney Michael Barry told the jury, on the first day of Tepper's murder trial. "Rather than just letting the kid be a wiseass, he pulled the trigger and shot him," Barry said during his opening argument.

FOOTBALL Team Record Preseason rankings in parentheses. 1. Holy Spirit (1) 1-0 Donta Pollock ran for 201 yards, and Nigel Jones ran for three TDs as the Spartans beat Oakcrest, 41-16, in what coach Charles Roman called "a street fight. " Next: Home Friday at 7 vs. Absegami. 2. Cherokee ( 2) 1-0 Defensive end Brandon Rapp's 27-yard interception return for a TD kick-started a second-half rally to a 27-13 victory over Lenape. Next: At Eastern Friday at 7. 3. St. Joseph (3)

The Inquirer TOP 10   FOOTBALL Team   Record Preseason rankings in parentheses. 1. Holy Spirit (1)   1-0 Donta Pollock ran for 201 yards, and Nigel Jones ran for three TDs as the Spartans beat Oakcrest, 41-16, in what coach Charles Roman called "a street fight. " Next: Home Friday at 7 vs. Absegami. 2. Cherokee ( 2)   1-0 Defensive end Brandon Rapp's 27-yard interception return for a TD kick-started a second-half rally to a 27-13 victory over Lenape.

"Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war. " - "Julius Caesar," Act 3, Scene 1 The dogs of war are snarling. They strain forward, slavering, growling, pawing the air, eager to get at one another, to rend and tear and wet their lips with blood. As strangers in a dog park would, we try to pull them back, to exert control. But you feel your feet sliding beneath you, feel yourself carried, helpless and unwilling, into this fight they mean to have. It strikes you how poor a leash is reason.

When career criminal Vaughn Matthews decided to snatch a woman's purse and run from a stopped El train last Wednesday, he perhaps thought Lindsay O'Brien - who is nearly three months' pregnant - would be an easy target. But the attempted robbery quickly turned into a street fight, and it was the criminal who ended up on the ground in agony, according to police. O'Brien, 28, was on a westbound train at 63rd and Market streets about 1:30 p.m. when Matthews, 42, punched her in the forehead, grabbed her bag - which contained her laptop - and ran down a stairwell and onto the street below, police said.

1WOMAN FATALLY STABBED AFTER FIGHT Two women who got involved in a street fight between two brothers got stabbed - one fatally - when one brother's girlfriend showed up at the scene in Southwest Philadelphia swinging a knife, police say. The fight broke out just before 11:30 p.m. on Upland Street near 60th, police spokeswoman Officer Tanya Little said. As the brothers brawled, one called his girlfriend, who arrived and began fighting a 22-year-old neighbor and a third bystander, Little said.

WHEN I stopped in the old CJ's Bar at Memphis and Susquehanna for what was the best tip a paperboy could get - an ice-cold fountain soda on a hot day - I never thought that some day I'd have an occasional byline in the People Paper. A few years back, I started communicating with the editorial board, and, since 2007, they've printed my op-eds every month or so. Some of you liked them. Some hated them. Some sent pictures of dead groundhogs with lottery tickets in their paws or sought to engage me in a street fight to help get your point across.

NEW YORK - Villanova coach Jay Wright admitted he told his team that Tennessee would try to make the NIT Season Tip-Off championship game a street fight but said he meant it "in a complimentary way. " However, the seventh-ranked Wildcats, who never seem to mind that style of basketball, didn't have an answer for the physical play of the No. 24 Volunteers on Friday night. They shot poorly from the field and suffered their first loss of the season, a 78-68 decision at Madison Square Garden.

NEW YORK - Villanova hasn't played for a championship in Madison Square Garden in 13 years. But that's March. This is still only November. After an early schedule that consisted of Bucknell, Marist, Boston University and Lafayette, all at home, most figured we would learn a little more from the seventh-ranked Wildcats' two games here. So, 2 nights after a 12-point win over a retooling UCLA team, we found out that something less than their best effort wasn't enough to get it done against No. 24 Tennessee, which lost some key pieces from last season's Final Eight club and was picked to finish fourth in the SEC East.

3-0 Ridley still sees room for improvement R IDLEY IS 3-0 to begin this season, though you wouldn't know it by talking to the Green Raiders' Dave Jankauskas. The 6-1, 250-pounder, who starts at right tackle and defensive nose guard, plays according to a set of high standards - that every time the Green Raiders take the field, the offensive and defensive lines consist of the toughest cats in the alley. Ridley proved that in last year's District 1 Class AAAA championship game by knocking out seven North Penn players in upsetting the Knights.