Tragedy

Through Oct. 17, Philly.com and The Inquirer will mark breast cancer awareness month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series will culminate in a special Philly.com/Inquirer/Daily News section on Oct. 18, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . Shona Sladyk works at the Vermont College of Medicine and is a registered member of the Breastcancer.org Online Community. This is her story: "My most difficult moment in my cancer journey was the day I found out that my biopsy did, in fact, show cancerous cells.

Antoine Winfield struggled to come up with the words to describe what it's been like in the nine days since his younger brother was murdered. The Minnesota Vikings cornerback played in the season opener last weekend, four days after learning of the death of 30-year-old Anthony Travis. And when the Vikings take the field against the Colts in Indianapolis on Sunday, he will be playing just three days after attending his brother's funeral. Winfield returned to practice Friday, one day after flying to his hometown of Akron, Ohio, for the services for Travis, who had two daughters.

The drama that played out in Courtroom 907 of the Criminal Justice Center last week was a classic urban tragedy. The victim - a well-loved, hardworking Ivy League graduate - faced his attacker, an antisocial, high school dropout with homemade tattoos whose only advocate was the defense attorney. But the script deviated. Usually, there is rancor. The victim's friends and relatives testify about how their lives have been damaged and do not hold back their fury at the perpetrator.

BRITISH POLICE and medics whose failures contributed to the deaths of 96 soccer fans in the country's worst sports disaster unfairly blamed the dead for the 1989 tragedy and sought to cover up their actions, newly disclosed documents revealed Wednesday. The documents vindicated efforts by the victims' families, who had spent 23 years demanding a full accounting of the events at Hillsborough stadium that killed fans of the Liverpool soccer team. Most of the victims were crushed and suffocated in a standing-only section after they were herded there by police.

When Moses Walker Jr.'s body is laid to rest Monday, it will not be the first time the fallen police officer's family has gathered amid tragedy. Walker's younger brother, Montague, was 20 when he was found on a sidewalk in the Carroll Park section of West Philadelphia with multiple gunshot wounds on March 17, 2001. Found on the 5400 block of Master Street at 2:57 p.m., Montague Walker was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was pronounced dead several hours later.

"We had tried raising money through the normal routes, and it didn't really work. " - Eric Migicovsky, the 25-year-old founder of Pebble, which set out to raise $100,000 on the Kickstarter website, and ended up with $10.3 million. "With today's announcement, we are taking the next step toward responsibly winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while continuing to support the necessary process of repair and recovery of the housing market. " - Michael Stegman, counselor on housing policy to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, on the government's move Friday to claim profits of the massively bailed-out mortgage backers.

GARRETT REID'S DEATH continued to resonate Thursday night, even among hardened Eagles fans. "Before his terrible tragedy, the most frustrating thing about Andy Reid was we really didn't know the guy because he never let us get to know him," said Drew Nyce of Voorhees, tailgating in the parking lot at the Linc with family and friends at Justin and Angela Guerrera's Kelly-green Eagles bus. "He sat there like a robot at press conferences and did...

BETHLEHEM — Crunch Time is a compilation of notable hits and occasional misses from Eagles training camp. Corner Brandon Hughes was blitzing from the left, running back Chris Polk was out of position. Looked like an easy sack for the defense — until Polk hustled back, extended his arms and sent Hughes flying through the air. It was the play of the day Monday, as the Eagles, looking understandably ragged but less subdued than they'd looked a day earlier, worked their way through the tragic loss of Garrett Reid, head coach Andy Reid's 29-year-old son. Andy Reid still wasn't here — and the three successive dead-ball penalties incurred at one point Monday would not have made him happy had he been present — but the Eagles did the required work under offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg and defensive coordinator Juan Castillo.

BETHLEHEM — The dark clouds arrived quickly, minutes after the end of practice. The television satellite trucks packed up and the players showered and dressed and made their way back to their dorm. Soon, thunder and lightning and rain overtook the valley. Sometimes it really does seem like life is just a series of cinematic cliches. The search for the appropriate words here is destined to be futile. On the day a man loses his son, there really are no words. He is a public man, Andy Reid is, and has been since 1999 in Philadelphia, but most still see him as a caricature: big, stubborn, impenetrable.

He was the son of a famous football coach. A position that should not have brought Garrett Reid much notoriety. But it was precisely because he was the son of a famous football coach that Garrett Reid, son of Eagles head coach Andy Reid, was all too familiar to the Philadelphia region. The 29-year-old's struggle with drugs and his incarceration after a 2007 car crash in which he was high on heroin got significant coverage in newspapers, on websites, and on television largely because of who his father is. Equally aggressively covered were the legal problems of another Reid son, Britt.