Wrongful Death

The mother of a man shot to death by police last February at the end of a stolen-car chase in North Philadelphia filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Thursday against six city police officers. The Common Pleas Court lawsuit by Carolyn Moses, mother of Jamil Moses, was announced at the Center City law offices of Paul J. Hetznecker. Hetznecker called for an independent probe of the Feb. 8, 2011, encounter in which Moses, 24, was shot to death after police boxed in the car in which he was a passenger at 23d Street and Susquehanna Avenue.

A Philadelphia judge has awarded $15 million in the death of a teen who fell into an abandoned mine shaft during a service trip to central Mexico. The Legal Intelligencer reports that Susan Patterson and Christopher Crane of West Chester have been awarded $15 million in survival and wrongful-death damages. Sixteen-year-old Taylor Crane died during a July 2007 trip organized by the defendant, Travel for Teens of Wayne. News reports say the teen died after he fell more than 500 feet into the shaft while playing tag with children on a visit to the Cinco Senores mine in Guanajuato state.

Christopher Raspanti was about to graduate from Pennsylvania State University when, after a long night of partying, a fire swept through the off-campus house he shared with five other students in State College. At least 50 revelers had jammed the three-story brick home that Saturday night in April 2005. Things had just wound down when the blaze was reported about 6:35 the following morning. Everyone escaped - except 21-year-old Raspanti, a 2002 graduate of Pennsbury High School in Bucks County.

It was one of the more searing allegations in the recent Philadelphia grand jury report on clergy sex abuse: A Bristol Township man killed himself after the Archdiocese of Philadelphia refused to believe that a priest molested him when he was an altar boy. On Wednesday, relatives of the man, Daniel Neill, became the latest to sue the archdiocese over its handling of cases of alleged sexual abuse. Neill fatally shot himself in 2009. "It's a wrongful death is what it is," said Jeff Anderson, one of the lawyers for the Neill's family.

A lawsuit against a Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed a woman in a North Philadelphia park more than three years ago was settled last week for $500,000. About 1:30 a.m. Sept. 8, 2007, on-duty Officer Thomas Ohm shot and killed Reora Askew, 38, in Norris Square Park. A police spokesman said at the time that officers were responding to a report of a woman - Askew - who allegedly was threatening passengers on a SEPTA bus with a butcher knife. Ohm found Askew in the park, at Howard Street and Susquehanna Avenue.

In a tragic case predestined to yield no winners, former Bucks County day-care owner Rimma Shvartsman was acquitted yesterday of criminal charges in the death of a toddler she forgot in her sweltering van last summer. Shvartsman, 47, of Northampton, wept quietly against her daughter's shoulder as the midafternoon verdicts - not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child - were read in Bucks County Court. Gil and Lyudmila Slutsky, who had sat tearfully through three days of evidence, including their own wrenching testimony about the loss of their 2-year-old son, Daniel, were not present for the verdict.

Lawyers for Tyreke Evans say their client had no knowledge his cousin, a passenger in the car he was driving, was carrying a gun or intended to shoot it the day a Chester Township man was killed. Lawyers for the family of Marcus Reason, the man killed by Jamar Evans in November 2007, say that is not believable. Tyreke Evans, a Sacramento Kings rookie point guard, and his cousin are among four men named in a wrongful-death civil suit filed in December in Delaware County. The family of Marcus Reason is asking for a judgment in excess of $50,000.

Tyreke Evans continues to be haunted by the November 2007 afternoon when his cousin, riding in the Ford Expedition that Evans was driving, pulled out a handgun and killed 19-year-old Marcus Reason in Chester Township. The 6-6 rookie point guard for the Sacramento Kings was never charged in the drive-by shooting. In fact, Evans testified for the prosecution during the preliminary hearing for his cousin, Jamar Evans, who later pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and was ordered to serve 9 to 20 years in a state prison.

Cassandra "Sandy" Morgan, who was arrested for stealing from a Wal-Mart that she believed she owned, should have been taken to a hospital, not a jail, a psychiatrist testified in federal court yesterday. Morgan, 38, of Aston, suffered from schizophrenia, and her condition had grown worse when the police caught her trying to take toys in February 2006. "I think she was a medical psychiatric emergency from the minute she was taken into that prison," said Eric Fine, a clinical psychiatrist and associate professor at Jefferson Medical College.

Brian Mildenberg is an attorney in Philadelphia Among the many newspaper stories written about the tragic death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly, an editorial in The Inquirer asked in closing, "Who will speak for Danieal's siblings?" I will. And I am - despite the recent media firestorm that has inflamed a misinformed public and led to multiple death threats against me and members of my family.? ? I share the anger and indignation expressed by so many editorial writers and members of the general public.