A 17-year-old Philadelphian turned himself in on Monday in connection with the fatal hit and run of June Rodriguez, a beloved and decades-long presence at Bob & Barbara’s Lounge.
Philadelphia police said they had already obtained a warrant for the teen’s arrest when he turned himself in, accompanied by his mother and attorney.
The teen, whose name is not being released because he is a minor, was charged with multiple felonies, including homicide by vehicle, as well as involuntary manslaughter, reckless driving, driving without a license, and related offenses.
But for the victim’s son, Skye Rodriguez, the arrest brings little solace.
“I feel relieved, but I’m still angry,” he said in between sobs. “I know I’m called to forgive because that’s my faith, I just don’t know how to. It’d be different if this kid hit my dad and went straight to the police station.”
But the teen didn’t.
The younger Rodriguez said his father did everything right as he rode his bike home after a shift at Bob & Barbara’s on Dec. 20.
“My father was very cautious — he even had reflectors on his boots,” said Skye Rodriguez, who learned of the added precaution when the morgue gave him his father’s things.
June Rodriguez, 54, was turning onto North 56th Street from Lancaster Avenue in Overbrook around 3:45 a.m. when the driver of a red SUV swerved into him and drove away, according to Philadelphia police.
Rodriguez’s death devastated Philadelphia’s queer community, where he was a known DJ, and the city’s house music scene. Friends remembered Diaz as a warm, welcoming individual, and a strong ally and presence in the LGBTQ+ community, though he was straight himself.
One remembrance feature on a GoFundMe page for Rodriguez’ funeral expenses said the DJ created “a sanctuary on the dance floor.”
His death also mobilized safe-streets advocates, who noted that stretch of Lancaster Avenue is one of the city’s most dangerous, part of the 12% of city streets that account for 80% of traffic deaths and serious injuries.
Rodriguez’s son said he had yet to watch the surveillance video procured by investigators. Police have told him that his father had his reflectors on and was in the bike lane.
Still, Rodriguez doesn’t know if he wants to see the moment of impact. His father’s belongings were covered with blood, he said. He doesn’t want to see the severity of the impact play out.
For now, he is grateful to have a break in the case.
“If it wasn’t detectives or police making it a big deal, what if it had been swept under the rug?” he said.
During her visit, Davidge posed with the string band captains from her wheelchair, collected an assortment of beads, made a TV appearance, had lunch at Marathon Grill, and drove by the Philadelphia Art Museum to see the Rocky statue.
“I fell in love with Philadelphia and would love to go back,” she said from her Swansea flat, marveling at how total strangers stopped her during the parade asking if she was “the grandma from Wales.”
“I will never ever forget it and I would love to go back tomorrow,” she said.
Still, Davidge’s granddaughter, Fiona Smillie-Hedges, reports not all is well back home. Davidge’s Instagram account, “grandmas.adventures,” was suspended for allegedly failing to follow the platform’s “community standards on account integrity.”
The family has inadvertently found itself among thousands of people who claim to have been erroneously banned thanks to faulty and overzealous artificial intelligence models. Like so many before her, Smillie-Hedges has not been able to get hold of a human.
At stake for the grandmother, who jokes about never leaving her flat and the possibility of death with the slightest illness, is her window to the world, specifically Philadelphia. She had amassed about 400 followers who shared her passion for the Mummers.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, did not respond to requests for comment.
The whole ordeal has been a blow to the family. Instagram was how the family was able to connect with Mummers in the first place and touch base with other Philadelphians who offered parade advice.
“She wouldn’t have been in the paper, or gone to the Mummers Museum, or met [Quaker City String Band captain] Jimmy Good, or had any of the other captains,” Smillie-Hedges said. “It would have been a completely different trip.”
The family doesn’t know how to broach the subject with Davidge, though they feel they can’t keep her in the dark much longer. While Davidge doesn’t know how to navigate the platform, she likes to hear what people are saying and have her niece respond to comments. For now, she’s still responding to her TikTok followers.
Smillie-Hedges doesn’t want to tarnish the Philadelphia experience and she doesn’t know how to relay Instagram’s reason for the ban. She’s not quite sure she understands herself.
“We don’t allow people on Instagram to pretend to be someone well known or speak for them without permission,” read a standard explanation from Instagram, which also said no one would be able to see the account and Davidge’s information would be permanently deleted.
The only peccadillo Smillie-Hedges can think of is calling Davidge “Queen Mumm” on some posts, a nickname given to her by Jim Donio, host of the String Band Sessions podcast. To the British, Queen Mum can be a reference to Queen Elizabeth, who was also known as the Queen Mother, and is long dead.
While the stakes are somewhat low for Davidge and her granddaughter, they have found themselves in what Reddit forums claim is becoming a growing problem. Meta artificial intelligence models are inaccurately flagging and disabling accounts with little recourse for users.
Smillie-Hedges can’t get past the automated responses to request another review of the decision.
According to the BBC, paying for Meta Verified is one way to speak to a human, but even that is not a surefire way to address account issues.
Reports of the bans extend to Meta’s other platforms Facebook and WhatsApp. A Change.org petition with more than 54,000 signatures demands the tech company address the AI banning issues across its platforms.
For now, Smillie-Hedges made a quick post on TikTok telling people about the suspension and letting fans know the family was trying to get it back. She also began uploading some of Davidge’s videos on Facebook as an additional way to connect with people.
“I was worried people were going to think something bad had happened,” Smillie-Hedges said. “Some people are really invested in her.”
Donio, who first connected with Smillie-Hedges and Davidge on Instagram and made much of the VIP visit to Philly possible, said he has tried to spread the word of the account mishap. He can now communicate with Smillie-Hedges and Davidge through email and video calls but he understands their frustration.
“I think the frustration that a lot of people feel is if you do something wrong or if you’ve miscommunicated something and then you want to resolve it, it’s virtually impossible to try to resolve it and explain your situation to a live person,” he said.
Smillie-Hedges is still hopeful that something can be done to change Meta’s mind about the account. In the meantime, she and her grandmother continue to reminisce and upload snippets of video from the visit.
Of the highlights there are many. There was the moment she met Good, who leads the Quaker City String Band. He surprised her while she visited the Mummers Museum.
Davidge woke up in her Center City hotel overlooking Broad Street just in time to greet 2026. Down below she saw two children play-fighting with Mummers umbrellas.
Then there was the parade itself, where Davidge was treated like a VIP. Though the string band competition was postponed because of heavy winds that led to performer injuries, she still got to see bands show off their costumes and perform. The string bands were the main draw when Davidge discovered the Mummers weeks after her longtime husband’s death. She felt it was something they would have enjoyed together.
And who could forget the freezing cold, joked Davidge, adding people could hardly see her face because she was bundled deep in layers of blankets at certain points.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she mused. “What a wonderful opportunity to be able to go there and see it myself.”
The waves rocked a dead 30-foot juvenile humpback whale that lay belly-up near Delaware’s Bethany Beach Friday as marine rescue workers prepared for the open-air postmortem examination that would take place on the sand.
The whale was first seen “floating at sea,” two miles off the Indian River Inlet earlier in the week, according to the Marine Education, Research & Rehabilitation Institute, also known as MERR. It finally beached Thursday.
As Suzanne Thurman, executive director of MERR, waited for heavy machinery Friday morning, she guessed the whale might weigh about 20,000 pounds, posing a serious challenge for the people investigating the mammal’s cause of death.
The weight, the constant movement at the behest of the ocean, and the slippery feel of the oil in the whale’s blubber made cutting it open for a necropsy — the examination to determine cause of death — inherently risky, said Thurman. The heavy machinery would have to stabilize the whale on land so the scientists could do their work.
“It can’t be towed,” Thurman said. “There are no other effective ways to move the whale.”
Unlike other animal necropsies, the whale’s postmortem examination would have to take place on the open beach, she said.
“A necropsy is very important because we can’t always tell what happened to the whale simply by looking at it,” she said, adding even if a whale is injured, scientists have to check for signs of human impact and if there was an underlying disease that led to its death.
Finding the cause of death for whale fatalities is crucial for conservationists. Though whale populations have largely rebounded since their peak hunting days, they face more trafficked waterways and a changing climate, which put them at risk all the same.
Whenever there’s a significant die-off of any marine population that “demands immediate response,” the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gets involved, declaring what’s called an unusual mortality event. This allows scientists to investigate the deaths and study the remaining population in real time.
There are three active unusual mortality events, all involving whales in the Atlantic — the Atlantic minke whale, the North Atlantic right whale, and the Atlantic humpback whale.
How the Delaware fatality factors into the larger picture of whale population health remains to be seen.
The speed at which MERR staff can finish the necropsy depends on environmental factors and equipment availability from the state.
After MERR is done with the necropsy, Thurman said the whale will be buried in the beach because it’s too heavy to move anywhere else and it will become an important source of nutrients.
The Delaware whale is the second such mammal death in the region this week.
A 25- to 30-foot fin whale was discovered on the bow of a ship Sunday night at a marine terminal in Gloucester City, N.J., though the necropsy process has been much slower.
The Marine Mammal Stranding Center took the lead in the New Jersey investigation, limiting public comments to its social media posts. By Wednesday, the Stranding Center said it had a necropsy plan in place for the 12- to 13-ton whale, but staff couldn’t move forward with it until they had a suitable burial location secured.
NOAA’s law enforcement arm, which is tasked with enforcing about 40 different marine laws, has opened an investigation into the whale death despite the incomplete necropsy. A spokesperson could not expand on what drove the decision, citing the pending investigation.
Stranding Center data, dating back to 2002, shows that whale strandings peaked in New Jersey in 2023, with a total of 14 cases. The following year saw a drop in strandings with a total of nine cases reported. Last year, strandings in New Jersey dropped to four.
Rob Lucas Jr. is not exactly sentimental about the 27-inch walrus penis bone that for decades has adorned the bar he inherited from his father.
But on Dec. 29, a patron was captured on video stealing the Donkey’s Place oddity, Lucas said, and it’s not something he takes lightly.
He wants his walrus penis bone back on his bar stat.
“I do have a credit card, but I can’t get the information from my credit card company unless I file a police report and that would mean going down to the police station and spending hours,” he said Wednesday. “We’d rather just get it back.”
The provenance of the bone is unknown to Lucas, third-generation owner, who grew up in the local cheesesteak spot and bar.
His grandfather, Leon “Donkey” Lucas, a heavyweight boxing contender in the 1928 Summer Olympics, opened the bar more than 80 years ago.
Donkey’s got a major boost in 2015 when Anthony Bourdain featured it in an episode of his travel food show Parts Unknown. Bourdain said “the best cheesesteak in the area might well come from New Jersey,” referring to the Donkey’s Place staple served on a seeded Kaiser roll.
Donkey’s ambience has not changed much since Bourdain’s visit. It has the feel of a bar where everyone knows your name, cozy and packed to the gills with random decor, from beer memorabilia, boxing gloves, a megalodon tooth, and of course, the walrus penis bone, also known as a walrus baculum, for the citizen scientists.
Lucas grew up with the megalodon tooth and walrus bone but never learned what they actually were until he took the bar over from his father about a decade ago and endeavored to take stock of what he had on his hands.
Since then, the bone has been a great conversation piece — patrons guess what it is and pose for photos with it — and just another part of the local cheesesteak spot’s charm.
It’s why the waitress working a Dec. 29 shift didn’t think anything of the three men’s interest in the bone. Lucas said they spent a few hours at the bar while the waitress juggled patrons and the grill that’s within sight of where the patrons were sitting.
“They weren’t wasted or anything, but they had some sandwiches, bought some merchandise, and then walked out with the walrus bone,” he said.
But after paying their tab, Lucas said security footage shows one of the men wrapped the bone in a large pashmina-like scarf and walked out.
Little is known about the men. Lucas said they told the waitress they’d come to the area for HiJinx Fest, the two-day dubstep, electronic music festival, held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center across the river. Lucas said the man who took the bone claimed he was a traveling tattoo artist, originally from Cleveland.
By Wednesday, Donkey’s Bar had posted a public plea on its TikTok account, asking for help in finding the bone, sharing screenshots of the trio walking out of the restaurant, bone in scarf.
The local response has been swift so far and one of downright indignation. Lucas said some tattoo friends have circulated the story and NJ Advance Media published an article about the search. Lucas imagines internet sleuths will do their own digging, though he does not want to get anyone in trouble.
“They could mail it back if they want,” he said of the trio. No questions asked.
Seeing the Mummers’ New Year’s Day parade became something of a running joke to Avril Davidge and her family.
You see, they live in Wales and Davidge is now a 93-year-old grandmother who rarely leaves her flat. She didn’t have a passport, nor had she been on a plane in 30 years. She’d never been to the United Statesand she jokes she could die tomorrow.
But after going down a YouTube rabbit hole and becoming what can only be described as obsessed with the tradition two years ago, she would often say things like “when we go to Philadelphia” or “when I see my Mummers.”
“It’s done a lot for me,” Davidge said. She had her granddaughter set her Mummers YouTube videos on autoplay since she can’t figure out the search function.“Even having breakfast, I put it on. It starts the day right for me.”
While the Mummers Parade can draw drastically divergent opinions at home, where some see it as a beloved multigenerational tradition and others paint it as an excuse for people to get drunk on Two Street, Davidge sees it as a connection to her late husband. She doesn’t know anyone in Wales who has even heard of Mummery, but deep in her heart, she knows it’s something her husband of 70 years would have loved. He died two years ago and she discovered her first Mummers video weeks later.
Quaker City String Band Captain Jimmy Good pushes the wheelchair of “Queen Mumm” Avril Davidge doing a Mummers strut. Davidge is a 93 year old Welsh grandma who came to the United States for the first time to see the Mummers.
Eventually, her family decided to give Davidge the trip of a lifetime to witness the 10,000-person spectacle that has ushered in the new year for Philadelphians for 125 years.Davidge will be among the many spectators watching the Mummers Parade take Broad Street on Thursday.
Using the power of social media and propelled by her family, Davidge landed Tuesday at Philadelphia International Airport, greeted by a Rocky statue — another bit of culture she loves. On Wednesday she was surprised with a trip to the Mummers Museum in South Philadelphia, where she delighted in a private tour: Yes, they’re real ostrich feathers on the costumes, and one of the more elaborate costumes can weigh 150 pounds.
Then she met Jimmy Good, captain of the Quaker City String Band, and a personal favorite of Davidge’s. Her family said Davidge often quiets them down with a “my Jimmy is on.”
“I’ll never forget this,” she told Good, complimenting what she called his beautiful smile and showing him her golden shoes, a nod to dem golden slippers. “Never.”
The two even strutted in the museum, Good pushing Davidge in her wheelchair as she lifted a gifted satin umbrella.
It was a scene Davidge’s family could hardly believe was playing out. Just a few weeks ago, they thought Davidge was at death’s door.
Divine intervention brings the Mummers to Wales
When Davidge’s husband died, she was “feeling low,” as she calls it.
Then the YouTube algorithm, programmed by her granddaughter to show her United Kingdom marching bands, showed her a clip of the Quaker City String Band performing “Make Believe,” a song Davidge and her husband loved. Her family felt it was almost a form of divine intervention.
Something about the string bands, the costumes, the performances offered a comfort Davidge needed. Soon, the Mummers were all she was watching and she quickly developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the longtime Philadelphian tradition.
The 1999 Quaker City String Band theme of “Reflections of Old Moscow” is a legendary performance, Davidge said, and then-captain Bob Shannon Jr. remains her all-time favorite.
She was in awe as she learned Shannon stood at 6-foot-10; the old YouTube clips are grainy and don’t do the performances justice.
Connecting Philly and Wales through social media
Davidge’s love for the Mummers has been contagious, family members say, not that they’ve had much of a choice.
Last year, Fiona Smillie-Hedges, Davidge’s granddaughter, asked a friend, American expat Wendy Ratcliffe, if she had heard of the Mummers.
Ratcliffe, whose maternal side of the family is scattered around Southeastern Pennsylvania, was floored.
“I said, vast swaths of the country would have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
When Ratcliffe’s family visited her, they brought a Mummers mug and other Philly merch for the grandmother they had heard so much about. The mug is not for use and remains propped in front of Davidge’s television.
Last Christmas, Davidge even got a Mummers book, which she calls her bible.
By 2025, the joke of going to Philly felt more like an inevitability. Smillie-Hedges, 38, tried to figure out how to maximize the experience and took to TikTok and Instagram to get some advice. She needed to know how people kept warm, how to get a good view of the string bands, and where to stay.
Soon she was in touch with Jim Donio, host of the String Band Sessions podcast, a longtime Mummer who led the broadcasts from 1985 to 1987.
Donio arranged for the museum tour and asked Good to set some time aside to meet Davidge.
“I need[ed] to step in here and do what I can to make this dream happen and make this dream come true,” Donio said.
But as Donio — who calls Davidge “Queen Mumm” — worked stateside, Davidge caught some sort of virus a few weeks ago, which at her age can be deadly.
Davidge said she thought she wouldn’t make it.
But Smillie-Hedges said the family used the Philadelphia trip to motivate her into eating and staying positive.
“She’s worked very hard to be here, to be well enough,” Smillie-Hedges said. “Every time I was like, you must eat this, you must drink that. Come on, Rocky training for Philly.”
On Wednesday, Davidge was all smiles. Her hotel overlooks Broad Street should she get cold and need to duck in for warmth. Unbeknownst to her, Donio also arranged for a golf cart to get her, Ratcliffe, Smillie-Hedges, and Davidge’s daughter Kay Hedges to their VIP seats by the judges’ table.
The whole trip feels implausible to the family, yet the only natural outcome.
“[Davidge] didn’t find the Mummers until it was literally a couple of weeks after my granddad had passed,” Smillie-Hedges said. “I swear it was meant to be.”
Caitlyn Collins thought the grinding metal sounds and subsequent bang outside her Hammonton home Sunday were coming from her heater.
It would take a moment to realize the loud crash came from a helicopter that had landed just beyond her backyard around 11:25 a.m., minutes after taking off from Hammonton Municipal Airport. Unable to get through to 911 — many people were already calling to report the crash— she, her husband, and a neighbor drove past a “giant fireball” in her backyard to the open field and took in the grim scene.
A trail of mechanical parts, which federal investigators said spanned about the length of a football field, was scattered in the open space.
Collins later learned the fireball was actually another helicopter, which video captured engulfed in flames and spinning out of control before it crashed in her backyard.
“It was unidentifiable as anything at that point,” she said. “It never even crossed our minds that that could have been a whole other vessel.”
The Hammonton police chief called it one of the worst aviation crashes in recent memory, killing pilots Kenneth Kirsch, a 65-year-old from Carneys Point, Salem County, and Michael Greenberg, a 71-year-old resident of Sewell, Gloucester County.
As federal authorities continue their investigation into what could have led to the crash, a South Jersey town has begun to process the harrowing scene and tragic deaths of two pilots who were described as good friends known for making an effort to fly every few weeks.
Collins takes some comfort in knowing she and her husband did everything they could to help.
“He actually was running paramedics back and forth on our golf cart because it was so muddy back there that cars were getting stuck,” she said.
Collins, meanwhile, stayed by the second helicopter, a red Enstrom model F-28A. It was on its side with Kirsch still held by his seat belt, but his body partly on the grass.
Collins, who is not a medical professional, did the only thing she could think of at the moment. She held Kirsch’s hand and offered lighthearted conversation. She asked him if he could hear the sirens, explaining they were the first responders on their way to help. Collins even tried to joke with Kirsch, saying this is probably not how either of them envisioned spending their Sunday.
“I wanted to make sure he knew that he was not alone, that he wasn’t in the middle of a field by himself, or in the woods or anything,” she said.
Police would show up within minutes.
Greenberg, who was in an Enstrom model 280C, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Hammonton Police Chief Kevin Friel, who has been in the department for 33 years, said he’s responded to about five air collisions during his tenure, Sunday’s crash being among the worst.
In addition to Hammonton police and the Hammonton Volunteer Fire Department, various neighboring first responders and partner agencies rushed to the scene or remained on standby, including AtlantiCare EMS, Waterford Township Fire Department, and Collings Lakes Fire Department.
The New Jersey Forest Fire Service was there in case a fire broke out in the nearby tree line and the New Jersey Department of Transportation helped reroute traffic.
The parcel of land where the helicopters crashed was close to U.S. Routes 30 and 206.
Friel said first responders worked quickly to secure both crash sites, which is of the essence when compromised aircraft are involved. First responders were worried the helicopter, which was already ablaze, could lead to an explosion. Meanwhile, there was a concern the helicopter Kirsch was in could catch fire.
Neither of those scenarios panned out.
Firefighters extinguished the helicopter in Collins’ backyard and EMS was able to get Kirsch out of the helicopter and airlift him to Cooper University Hospital. He would later die from his injuries.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board continue investigating. The NTSB said the helicopters were slated to be taken from the crash site to a secure location Tuesday. A preliminary report is expected to be made available in about 30 days.
For now, Friel continues to check in with people who were on the scene. That same night, personnel who were part of the initial response held a debriefing.
“It helps people to deal with the traumas and things that they see, instead of compartmentalizing it and stuffing it down and having them become either physically or mentally ill from dealing with the traumas,” he said.
Collins was devastated to learn Kirsch died. She remembers the corners of his mouth turning upward after she told her joke.
“I thought he was going to be a miracle,” she said. “There was no doubt in my mind that he was a fighter, that this was going to be just one of those stories that he could tell again and again and again.”
Two men stopped by Apron Cafe, a breakfast spot overlooking Hammonton Municipal Airport’s runway, before they took off in separate helicopters late Sunday morning for what the restaurant owner described as one of their frequent flights together over the years.
Minutes later, about 11:25 a.m., Apron Cafe patrons and staff could see one of the helicopters spiraling, engulfed in flames not far in the distance.
“I looked up and I could see in the distance the one spiraling down and then I see the other one coming down,” said the cafe’s owner, Sal Silipino. “It was hard to believe that they were crashing.”
Local authorities identified the pilots Monday as Kenneth Kirsch, a 65-year-old from Carneys Point, Salem County, and Michael Greenberg, a 71-year-old resident of Sewell, Gloucester County.
Hammonton Police Chief Kevin Friel said that Greenberg died at the scene. Kirsch died at an area hospital after being flown there.
Just what led to the crash remains under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
The parcel of land where the helicopters crashed was an open field amid a busy area. U.S. Routes 30 and 206 are nearby, as are Atlanticare Hammonton Health Park, an assisted living facility, and homes.
“It was a miracle,” Silipino said. “There was so much in that area that they could have landed on top of.”
Federal investigators remained on site Monday cataloging debris that spanned nearly the length of a football field and was “made up of parts of the main rotor and tail rotors,” according to the NTSB.
The agency said the helicopters are slated to be taken from the crash site to a secure location Tuesday. The preliminary report is expected to be made available in about 30 days.
This article contains information from the Associated Press.
Twenty-five years after Calvin Helton was killed in what remains the deadliest mass shooting in Philadelphia history, his mother, Veronica Conyers, feels frozen in time.
Her son, forever 19 in the West Philly rowhouse where he was killed execution-style with six other people ranging from 15 to 54 years old. And Conyers, left to spend the years since fighting to keep his memory alive.
“I’m not healed,” she said of losing her firstborn, who had dreamed of being a Navy SEAL. “I want everybody to know the truth behind this massacre.”
These days, that truth is shared with anyone who will listen and at annual vigils that celebrate the victims’ lives. There are Samuel “Malik” Harris Jr., 15; Tyrone Long, 18; George “Jig” Porter, 18; Ronnette Abrams, 33; Edward Sudler, 44; and Alfred Goodwin, 54.
Despite the notoriety of what came to be known as the Lex Street massacre, Conyers remains hurt by how the deaths never garnered protests, and how the interest in the homicides came in the form of sensational headlines.
The shooting, after all, took place in a house known for drug activity during a turbulent period in the neighborhood, when residents complained of rampant drug dealing and concerns over safety.
Coverage of the Lex St. Massacre in Jan. 2001.
Conyers felt public sentiment regarding the homicide was sealed, doomed to be forgotten, once police and prosecutors attributed the shooting to a drug-turf dispute.
It would later turn out the killings stemmed from a dispute over the trade of a car and a broken clutch. But Conyers felt the damage had been done by police and media reports.
“They slandered my son’s name, saying he a kingpin and he was drug dealer,” she said, adding he was a good student and never gave her any trouble.
Coverage of Lex St. case in 2002.
The initial bungle in the investigation, which involved allegations of coerced confessions by police, also stunned legal minds at the time. Four men spent 18 months in jail and faced a possible death sentence, only for charges to begin to be dropped just as the first trial was set to begin. Those men would go on to successfully sue the city for $1.9 million over their imprisonment.
Police arrested brothers Dawud Faruqi and Khalid Faruqi in late 2002, as well as Shihean Black and getaway driver Bruce Veney, in connection to the killings.
In the various trials, it was revealed Black traded his Chevrolet Corsica for Porter’s Dodge Intrepid. But Porter blew the Corsica’s clutch, and when Black would not trade the cars back, Porter used his spare key and took back the Intrepid.
Black found Porter on the 800 block of North Lex Street and an argument escalated into a shooting.
Black pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and the brothers were convicted of seven counts of that charge. All three received seven consecutive life sentences. Veney, the getaway driver, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, receiving 15 to 30 years in prison.
Tameka Porter, George’s sister, has led the vigils that take place every Dec. 28. She feels a lot of hurt from how public sentiment placed blame on the victims for being in that house.
Coverage of the Lex Street massacre in 2002.
“No one is at fault but the killers,” she said.
Even so, Porter tries not to think about what people might say. “It doesn’t matter how he died or who did it, he’s gone.”
Her brother and Helton were best friends, she said, recalling that both were smart and charming, and loved to flirt with girls. Her brother never got in trouble or was arrested for drugs, she said. That’s what she wants people to know.
On Sunday, Porter held the annual vigil at the Lucien Blackwell Community Center. The neighborhood looks drastically different after a Philadelphia Housing Authority effort in the aughts to revitalize the area, building 18 new homes.
It was an intimate affair, though it did not set out to be so.
Porter and one of Helton’s cousins talked about how they wanted to celebrate all that the victims meant to them. Councilmember Jamie Gauthier echoed the sentiment.
“Today is about honoring them,” she said. “It is about holding space for the survivors, and it is about standing with families and with our community members here in Mill Creek and across our city who continue to carry the weight of gun violence.”
Conyers stayed quiet, holding back tears. She wore a sweatshirt that read “Lex St. Fallen Soldiers.” On it was the now-very faded photo of her son.
June Rodriguez, 54, was riding his bike home after his shift at Bob & Barbara’s Lounge early Saturday morning — he refused to own a car in order to stay in shape — when he was killed in a hit-and-run.
Rodriguez was turning onto North 56th Street from Lancaster Avenue in Overbrook around 3:45 a.m. when the driver of a red SUV swerved into him and drove away, according to Philadelphia police.
In between angry sobs, his mother, Miriam Rodriguez, described a violent deaththat ran so counter to the way her son lived. She said his chest was crushed, his spine severed, and the driver just left him on the cold street.
“Growing up, he was always a good kid and everybody loved him, he had that kind of charisma,” she said. “It’s hard for somebody to come and hit him with a car and not do nothing about it.”
Police are investigating, looking for tips that could lead to an arrest.
Meanwhile, the sudden death of the longtime DJ, a decades-long presence at Bob & Barbara’s, has left a hole in Philly’s queer community and the house music scene.
Born in the Bronx, Rodriguez was always into music, his mother said. He took to the oldies and the salsa music his mother would play when cleaning the house. His love of music spread to dance, and he eventually got into breakdancing.
Rodriguez’s love of music was contagious, according to those who knew him, and garnered him many friends when he arrived in Philly around the mid-aughts.
Though straight, Rodriguez was a longtime member of the drag show DJ team at Bob & Barbara’s and well-known among Philly’s LGBTQ+ community, playing at Pride events.
June Rodriguez (L), 54, and his son Skye Rodriguez. The older Rodriguez was a beloved Philly house DJ and well-known ally and presence in the LGBTQ community. He was killed in a hit-and-run.
When Rodriguez’s only son, Skye, came out to his father as transgender, the DJ was “fully on board” and seamlessly began introducing him as his son, Skye Rodriguez said. Rodriguez was even trying to get his son to leave Reading and move to Philly, where he would have access to a larger LGBTQ+ community.
“He wanted me to be as happy as possible,” SkyeRodriguez said. “He was like, ‘You know, I’ll do anything I can to get you here.’”
In the days after his death, longtime friends and acquaintances have flooded social mediawith remembrances.
Bob & Barbara’s mourned Rodriguez in a Facebook post. He’d had a decades-long relationship with the bar, working as door greeter, security, and occasional barback over the years. His latest venture there was learning how to tend bar, according to the lounge.
“His passion for music radiated through every part of his life and he created an expansive and diverse community through his art,” the post read.
Cameron Guthrie, a longtime friend who met Rodriguez in the now-closed Liaison Room, said Rodriguez was so beloved because of how supportive he could be, even to borderline strangers.
“He was everybody’s biggest fan,” said Guthrie, who also DJs, and remembers how Rodriguez was constantly telling him he should be playing in New York City, especially when his music wasn’t finding an audience in Philly.
“When others would read you to filth, he’d root for you.”
The community Rodriguez built has been visible in the days following his death. Outside of the online tributes, his son said a local music festival, called Departed, dedicated proceeds from its after-hours party Saturday to his funeral expenses. Rodriguez had been slated to play the after-hours event.
“I didn’t realize how many friends and people loved him until I went to the set that he was supposed to play the other night, and saw how many people showed up for him,” his son said.
Guthrie and other DJ friends organized a similarly popular dance party Sunday at Penn Treaty Park. A GoFundMe that said Rodriguez created “a sanctuary on the dance floor” has raised more than $17,000 for funeral expenses.
Safe-streets advocates, meanwhile, are calling attention to the dangerous conditions on the strip of road where Rodriguez was killed.
A long stretch of Lancaster Avenue has long been identified, by the city’s own calculations, as one of the most dangerous in Philadelphia, part of the 12% of city streets that account for 80% of traffic deaths and serious injuries. It has been listed on what is called the high-injury network for years.
Just in September, a 77-year-old pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run at 54th Street and Lancaster Avenue, not far from where Rodriguez was killed.
The strip does have a bike lane, but advocates say it should be protected to prevent reckless drivers from using it as a shoulder or turning lane.
“The frequent appearance of one road on the high-injury network is proof that the current configuration is unsafe for everyone, and PennDot, who controls the street, is not doing enough to fix it,” Philly Bike Action said in a statement, adding Rodriguez’s death was the seventh cyclist fatality in the citythis year.
City officials want New Year’s Eve to set the tone for what’s slated to be a year of blockbuster celebrations for the country’s 250th birthday.
“We want the city to feel the excitement, and quite frankly, the potential of 2026 from the very beginning,” said Mayor Cherelle L. Parker in a Monday news conference that laid out the details of the New Year’s festivities and hyped up the public for other events such as the FIFA World Cup and the 2026 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
The city will host its first-ever New Year’s Eve concert featuring LL Cool J, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Los Angeles rock band Dorothy, and Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts graduate Adam Blackstone — no tickets required and free.
An image of New Year’s Eve concert headliner LL Cool J is under portraits of former mayors in the Mayor’s Reception Room at City Hall.
The Ben Franklin Parkway will open at 6 p.m. so people can have enough time to get through security scanners before the concert kicks off at 8 p.m. In all, some 25,000 people are expected to fit in the secure perimeter, according to event planners.
Blackstone will premiere his new song, “Brotherly Love,” and the music will keep going until the countdown and fireworks.
The Delaware River Waterfront Corp., which has operated a barge full of fireworks for approximately 30 years, will be kicking up the pyrotechnics a notch with three barges. As usual, there will be two fireworks shows along the river, one at 6 p.m. and another at midnight.
“From Spruce Street Harbor Park to Cherry Street Pier, from Pennsport to Port Richmond, from the Parkway to the waterfront, we are going to light up the Philly sky for 2026,” said DRWC president and CEO Joseph Forkin.
People can take part in an assortment of family-friendly activities at Cherry Street Pier and Independence Blue Cross RiverRink Winterfest, which are ticketed experiences. A replica of the Liberty Bell will leave the National Liberty Museum for the night to ring in the new year at the pier.
Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said police will be out in full force — as is the norm, specific numbers of officers deployed were not disclosed — and reminded the public to celebrate safely, and leave the weapons at home if they’re going to the concert. Bethel also encouraged people to ditch the dangerous tradition of celebratory gunfire.
Bethel noted the 1999 case of Joe Jaskolka, only 11 years old at the time, who was struck in the head by so-called celebratory fire.
“Get your pots and pans and bang the pans,” Bethel said, reminding residents that what goes up must come down.
Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson offered a similar safety warning regarding fireworks: Leave it to the professionals. Even sparklers aren’t safe, he said. Though often seen as a safe alternative for young people, Thompson said they are not, burning at 1,500 degrees.
Still, officials feel confident that New Year’s Eve celebrations will be a boon for Philadelphia’s spirits and ideally the economy, though Parker said the final price tag was not yet available — a report on the cost and return on investment will be available after the event is done, she said.
Yet New Year’s Eve is only the beginning and a bit of a test run for the rest of the year.
The very next day, the Mummers strut on Broad Street with plumes and satin with a brass accompaniment.
After that, it’ll be a spate of sporting events and conventions, on top of already scheduled events like Wawa Welcome America.
Jennifer Nagle, with the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the year is already looking to be a busy one for hotels and that new traditions, such as the New Year’s Eve concert, along with external recognition from places like the Michelin Guide, are placing the city on the “national and global stage.”
Nagle said 1.5 million room nights are set to be booked in Philadelphia. Visitors are additionally projected to spend $950 million, which will result in $1 billion in economic impact.
The Quaker City String Band performs before a news conference where city officials shared details on how Philadelphians and visitors can ring in the New Year and celebrate the official kickoff of the nation’s 250th anniversary,
