Variety Store

Like pieces of a puzzle, investigators took surveillance video from five businesses and followed the trail of two men they now consider persons of interest in the killing of a Collingdale merchant last week. "Where one ended, we picked it up in another," Robert W. Adams, Collingdale police chief, said of the videos. Still images were released Thursday showing the men in the hope that they can be identified. Yogesh "Yogi" Bhavsar, 34, of Newark, Del., was shot in the chest during an apparent armed robbery at the Variety Store in the 500 block of MacDade Boulevard.

William McSeed was hanging on the corner. An unidentified man was lounging in a drug house. Joseph DiCristino was quarreling. One by one, all three were murdered last night in different parts of the city. Three killers armed with guns obliterated three lives in less than three hours. First to die last night was McSeed, 29, of Federal Street near 25th. A killer found him hanging out on Homestead Terrace near 24th Street, in the Passyunk Homes public housing project, at 6:15 p.m. The gunman shot McSeed four times.

Delaware County investigators are scouring surveillance video for clues to who killed a Collingdale merchant. "The tapes will tell," Collingdale Police Chief Robert Adams said Thursday. Yogesh "Yogi" Bhavsar, 34, of Newark, Del., was shot in the chest during an apparent armed robbery Wednesday afternoon at the Variety Store in the 500 block of MacDade Boulevard. Bhavsar, who had worked at the store for about seven years, was pronounced dead at the scene, Adams said. Police were reviewing tapes obtained from the store, as well as those from nearby businesses and homes, from around the time Bhavsar was killed, Adams said.

A 14-year-old girl was critically wounded by gunfire yesterday, the fourth young person to be shot in the past five days. Children - three killed and one critically wounded - have become the latest victims as a rash of homicides continued to plague the city. In the five-day span, an 11-year-old, a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old were slain, and a 14-year-old girl was critically wounded, all by gunfire. And teen-agers were charged in all the cases. The latest victim was Angie Sutton, 14, of Elwood Street near Stenton Avenue in Germantown, who was critically wounded last evening when she was struck by a random shot in a variety store near her home.

An angy mob of about 200 young people turned over two cars and set them ablaze, pelted a marked police car with rocks and bottles and looted a variety store early last night in the city's Hunting Park section, police said. They said the disturbance apparently was triggered by the fatal shooting Monday night of Luis Antonio Ortiz, 20, who was shot five times in front of a bar at Marshall and Bristol Streets. He died shortly thereafter at Temple University Hospital. At the time, Ortiz was free on $150,000 bail and awaiting trial on a charge of murder for allegedly firing two shots into a man at close range as the man begged for mercy, according to court testimony.

A 33-year-old man was arrested this morning for the Monday shooting death that apparently set a mob of 200 looting and torching the Hunting Park streets last night. Andres Albaladejo, 33, of Tioga Street near Sixth, surrendered to police this morning. He was charged with murder, aggravated and simple assault, and related offenses. The streets, wracked last night by roving men who looted a variety store and torched two cars, were calm this morning as work crews tried to remove the scars of battle.

This all began about a year or so ago. I was at some dinner at the German Society of Pennsylvania, at Sixth and Spring Garden, when Dr. George J. Beichl, who is the president of the society, told me that Otto Haas wanted to talk to me. "He says you wrote a column about his horse," George Beichl, who heads the chemistry department at St. Joe's University, said. I couldn't remember writing about Otto Haas' horse. I had never met Otto Haas, although I knew he was very big in the Rohm and Haas chemical empire.

Four-year-old Michael Kennedy lost his best friend Saturday with the sudden death of Joseph "Joey" Conran. Conran, a lifelong Grays Ferry resident who worked in a warehouse and then owned a variety store, was 65. For the last two years, little Michael spent his days with Conran, riding around the neighborhood and playing. They were neighbors. "They called each other their best friend," said Conran's daughter, Beth. "He loved him. " Conran, who loved the Christmas season, had already bought a bagful of toys for his little friend when he fell ill last week.

Getting high on crack was more important to Tracy Barnes than taking care of her 6-month-old son last December. So Barnes, 26, left little Dametrius Barnes with a man she barely knew, and sent two shipments of crack to him while she was "out playing" for a few days around Christmas, Assistant District Attorney Angel Flores said yesterday. Flores said the man told the mother he was leaving, but she was too busy using drugs to return to her apartment on Lee Street near Allegheny Avenue to check on her baby.