A former criminal defense attorney was sentenced Wednesday to two years’ probation for smuggling contraband — including Suboxone and a cell phone — into Philadelphia’s Federal Detention Center last year in an apparent attempt to placate a purported gang leader.
Paul DiMaio of Turnersville apologized for his actions during a sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge John R. Padova, saying: “I absolutely should’ve known better.”
DiMaio said his behavior was an ill-conceived response to a variety of pressures he was feeling at the time — including learning of a cancer diagnosis for his wife, and being afraid that the inmate who wanted the prohibited items was an accused murderer who had also been charged with attempting to arrange contract killings from jail.
“This is not me,” DiMaio said. “I think it was, for lack of a better term, a perfect storm.”
Padova said that 90 days of DiMaio’s probationary sentence must be served at a halfway house or similar reentry facility.
DiMaio was indicted last year after prosecutors said he went to the detention center in February 2025 with two accordion-style folders, one of which contained a cell phone, a charging cord, strips of Suboxone, and 240 loose cigarettes.
The materials — which inmates are not allowed to possess — were not discovered by guards overseeing entrants to the jail that day, prosecutors said. But surveillance footage later showed DiMaio taking the two folders to a visiting room, where he met with a prisoner who was associated with another inmate, Jahlil Williams, who prosecutors say was the intended recipient of the contraband.
Williams — also known as “25th Street Bill” or “Kill Bill” — was awaiting trial for a variety of violent crimes in a sprawling racketeering case. DiMaio said he was afraid that Williams, the purported leader of the Omerta street gang, was upset over a monetary dispute involving a previous legal case, and that Williams might seek to harm him if he didn’t go along with the smuggling plot.
“I panicked,” DiMaio said, “and I made just a horrible decision.”
While in the visiting room at the detention center, prosecutors said, DiMaio gave Williams’ associate — who has not been charged in the case — the folder containing the prohibited items, and that man was supposed to give the materials to Williams.
But a guard searched the folder before the prisoner got back to his cellblock and found the prohibited items inside. After an FBI investigation, DiMaio was charged with crimes including providing contraband to an inmate and aiding and abetting.
Williams was charged as well, as were his sister Jada and his mother, Tanya Culver, who were accused of participating in the conspiracy. They are all still awaiting trial.
DiMaio pleaded guilty last fall to providing contraband and making a false statement.
He surrendered his law license voluntarily shortly after he was charged, he said in court. He has since been seeking to find other ways to pay his family’s bills, but said the loss of his career and his wife’s ongoing health challenges have left the couple “financially ruined.”
Padova, the judge, told DiMaio he was involved in “serious conduct” but added: “This is the first day of the rest of your life.”
“We’ve given you the opportunity to make the best of it,” Padova said.
After the biggest snowfall in a decade and an Arctic freeze that locked in the snowpack with a tenacity rarely experienced in the region, Philadelphians can now be seen walking the streets in short sleeves, eating lunch outside, and preparing for spring staples like the Cherry Blossom Festival.
It was only in the 40s in Philly Wednesday, but after what felt like a never-ending cold front, it might as well have been summer.
“I can’t wait to take walks again,” said Jenny Rojas, a Korean major at the University of Pennsylvania. She and classmate Justin Lo were strolling through campus in 40-degree weather like it was a breath of fresh air after weeks of below-freezing temperatures.
“I’m from Michigan, so this snow isn’t that bad, but the temperatures were freezing. We just stayed inside,” said Lo, a Penn economics major.
As Philadelphians bustled through Penn’s campus, an assortment of short-sleeve T-shirts, skirts, and shorts was sported by many. Some folks’ lack of coats didn’t stop Lo and Rojas from bundling up still. And while the temperature is getting reasonable, Philadelphians are still traversing treacherously slippery sidewalks and 3-foot snow piles blocking walkways.
The remnants are going to be slow to vanish with overnight lows below freezing, but the snowpack is decidedly showing its age and is on the run.
The ice covering the Schuylkill River is melting on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026 in Philadelphia, Pa. The high on Wednesday was 46 degrees.
Temperatures are due to cool down some Thursday and Friday with highs in the 30s, but the 40s are due back on the weekend.
For some, like Penn administrative assistant Sheria Crawley, it was just a relief, and a surprise, to be able to finally say, “Thank God it’s 30 degrees out.” Crawley, who has lived in the city for years, said the snowstorm of 2026 is one of the worst she’s seen, not giving residents a reprieve from the cold.
“It was brutal because we’re used to getting snow and then a warm-up right after that takes the snow away. This year, we couldn’t catch a break,” she said.
The thing she can’t wait for most this spring is to see the “last vestige” of snow finally melt. Crawley said she would be excited then, but the severity of this storm would stick with her for years.
“I feel like there’s going to be a mass exodus from the city to all the classic vacation spots nearby so that we can just recover from that storm,” she said.
A cyclist travels on the Schuylkill River Trail along Kelly Drive on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026 in Philadelphia, Pa. The high on Wednesday was 46 degrees.
Eirini Antonopoulou felt like a phoenix rising from the ashes after weeks cooped up inside without the sunshine.
“Since the previous weeks have been so gloomy, I’ve been feeling kind of down,” the Penn freshman said. “It’s gorgeous out today. We have more sunlight now, so I feel more optimistic.”
Antonopoulou’s classmate, Tyrus Roney, said he was happy to see city life returning to normal, with people stopping to chat and not bundled up, rushing to their destinations.
“It’s just it’s so much more vibrant with people outside interacting with each other,” Roney said. “Now we just have to take care of this dirty snow on the side of the road.”
On another day, perhaps we would mention that the region has an outside chance of seeing some fresh snow late in the weekend. That can wait; as long as it chooses.
“Smokin’” Joe Frazier is heading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Philly’s statue of the famed heavyweight boxing champion is slated to be installed at the base of the museum’s steps later this year following a Philadelphia Art Commission vote Wednesday that approved the move. All five commissioners present Wednesday voted in favor of the statue’s relocation from its longtime home at the sports complex in South Philadelphia.
The proposal, presented by Creative Philadelphia, the city’s office for the creative sector, will see the Frazier statue installed where Philly’s original Rocky statue stands today. The Rocky statue, meanwhile, will be installed at the top of the museum’s steps.
“Placing the Joe Frazier statue at the Art Museum allows us to share a more complete history about Philadelphia’s spirit,” Marguerite Anglin, the city’s public art director, said Wednesday. “One rooted in real people, real work, and real pride in this city.”
The Frazier statue should move to the Art Museum sometime this spring, Anglin said. That relocation coincides with the move of the Rocky statue currently at the base of the steps, which is slated to be temporarily installed inside the museum for the first time as part of the forthcoming exhibition “Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments.” That Rocky statue will then be installed at the top of the museum’s steps in the fall, while the Rocky statue now at the top of the steps will go back into actor Sylvester Stallone’s private collection.
Created by sculptor Stephen Layne, the Frazier statue was unveiled in 2015 at what is now Stateside Live! at the sports complex in South Philadelphia. Its debut came years after Frazier’s death in 2011, which kicked off a campaign to erect the statue in his memory. Standing at 12 feet tall, it depicts the boxer moments after knocking down Muhammad Ali during the “Fight of the Century” — a famed March 1971 bout in which Ali suffered his first professional loss after a brutal 15-round skirmish.
For years before its creation, Frazier’s supporters lamented the fact that Philadelphia had long had a Rocky statue, but lacked one showing its own real-life champion. Our Rocky statue, in fact, has been around for more than 40 years, and has stood outside the Art Museum for two decades — about twice as long as the Frazier statue has even existed.
Creative Philadelphia’s plan featured widespread support from leaders including Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, as well as Frazier’s family and friends. It received little pushback at Wednesday’s meeting, with Gabrielle Gibson, a granddaughter of Frazier’s, asking what is perhaps the most obvious question about the placement: Shouldn’t the Frazier statue be at the top?
He was, after all, a real person, a real Philadelphian, and a real champion. Rocky, meanwhile, is a fictional character who appears to be an amalgamation of several real-life boxers’ stories — Frazier included, according to Creative Philadelphia. Many speakers Wednesday noted that, like Rocky, Frazier was known to run up the Art Museum’s steps and was said to have boxed sides of beef during his training, among other parallels.
And then there is the symbolism of where the Rocky and Frazier statues will stand.
“During Black History Month, I think we need to understand the new placement,” Gibson said. “A real boxer and a Black man’s image and likeness would be placed at a lower position beneath the fictional white character whose story was inspired by real boxers.”
The Frazier statue’s placement at the bottom of the steps, Anglin said, was for two main reasons. First, she said, having Frazier at the bottom makes it the first statue visitors will encounter at the Art Museum — even if they are there expressly to see Rocky — which will provide “an opportunity to be grounded in history.”
Second, the Rocky statue’s footprint is roughly half the size of the Frazier statue, which would not be “safe or feasible” to install on high, Anglin said. Putting Rocky at the top, Anglin said, allows for better circulation around the monument, and avoids the potential logistical and code-related issues putting Frazier there could present.
His son, and former heavyweight boxer Marvis Frazier (right), and Rev. Blane Newberry from Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church bless a 12-foot-tall 1,800-pound bronze statue of “Smokin’ Joe” Frazier after it was unveiled in 2015.
Jacqueline Frazier-Lyde, Frazier’s daughter, a retired professional boxing champion and a Municipal Court judge, expressed support for the move Wednesday, calling the statue a reminder that “we can overcome any obstacle and achieve.” She also recounted her father’s feelings on the Rocky statue, specifically when he would see tourists taking photos with Stallone’s character.
“At times,” she said, “he would say, ‘Don’t they understand that I’m the heavyweight champion?’”
Robert E. Booth Jr., 80, of Gladwyne, renowned pioneering knee surgeon, former head of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Pennsylvania Hospital, celebrated antiquarian, professor, researcher, writer, lecturer, athlete, mentor, and volunteer, died Thursday, Jan. 15, of complications from cancer at his home.
Born in Philadelphia and reared in Haddonfield, Dr. Booth was a top honors student at Haddonfield Memorial High School, Princeton University, and what is now the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He was good at seeing things differently and went on to design new artificial knee joint implants and improved surgical instruments, serve as chief of orthopedics at Pennsylvania Hospital, and mentor celebrated surgical staffs at Jefferson Health, Aria Health, and Penn Medicine.
He joined with two other prominent doctors to cofound the 3B orthopedic private practice in the late 1990s and, over 50 years until recently, performed more than 50,000 knee replacements, more than anyone, according to several sources. Last March 26, he did five knee replacements on his 80th birthday.
In a tribute, fellow physician Alex Vaccaro, president of Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, said: “He restored mobility to thousands, pairing unmatched technical mastery with a compassion that patients never forgot.”
In a 1989 story about his career, Dr. Booth told The Inquirer: “It’s so much fun and so gratifying and so rewarding to see what it means to these people. You don’t see that in the operating room. You see that in the follow-ups. That’s the fun of being a surgeon.”
Dr. Booth was also praised for his organization and collaboration in the operating room. “His OR was a clinic in team work and efficiency,” a former colleague said on LinkedIn.
He told Medical Economics magazine in 2015: “I love fixing things. I like the mechanics and the positivity of something assembled and fixed.”
This article about Dr. Booth’s practice was published in The Inquirer in 2015.
His procedural innovations reduced infection rates and increased success rates. They were scrutinized in case studies by Harvard University and others, and replicated by colleagues around the world. Some of the instruments he redesigned, such as the Booth retractor, bear his name.
He was president of the Illinois-based Knee Society in the early 2000s and earned its 2026 lifetime achievement award. In an Instagram post, colleagues there called him “one of the most influential leaders in the history of knee arthroplasty.”
He was a professor of orthopedics at Penn’s school of medicine, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, and the old Allegheny University of Health Sciences. He loved language and studied poetry on a scholarship in England after Princeton and before medical school at Penn. He told his family that his greatest professional satisfaction was using both his “manual and linguistic skills.”
He was onetime president of the International Spine Study Group and volunteered with the nonprofit Operation Walk Denver to provide free surgical care for severe arthritis patients in Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. Colleagues at Operation Walk Denver noted his “remarkable spirit, profound expertise, and unwavering commitment” in a Facebook tribute.
This story about Dr. Booth’s charitable work abroad appeared in The Inquirer in 2020.
At home, Dr. Booth and his wife, Kathy, amassed an extensive collection of Shaker and Pennsylvania German folk art. They curated five notable exhibitions at the Philadelphia Antiques Show and were recognized as exceptional collectors in 2011 by the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks.
He lectured widely about art and antiques, and wrote articles for Magazine Antiques and other publications. He was president of the American Folk Art Society and active at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire.
“He was larger than life for sure,” said his daughter, Courtney.
Robert Emrey Booth Jr. was born March 26, 1945, in Philadelphia. He was the salutatorian of his senior class and ran track and field at Haddonfield High School.
Dr. Booth enjoyed time with his family.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Princeton in 1967, won a letter on the swimming and diving team, and played on the school’s Ivy League championship lacrosse team as a senior. He wrote his senior thesis about poet William Butler Yeats and returned to Philadelphia from England at the suggestion of his father, a prominent radiologist, to become a doctor. He graduated from Penn’s medical school in 1972.
“I always liked the intellectual side of medicine,” he told Medical Economics. “And once I got to see the clinical side, I was pretty well hooked.”
He met Kathy Plummer at a wedding, and they married in 1972 and had a daughter, Courtney, and sons Robert and Thomas. They lived in Society Hill, Haddonfield, and Gladwyne.
Dr. Booth liked to ski and play golf. He was an avid reader and enjoyed time with his family on Lake Kezar in Lovell, Maine.
“He was quite the person, quite the partner, and quite the husband,” his wife said, “and I’m so proud of what we built together.”
Dr. Booth and his wife, Kathy, married in 1972.
In addition to his wife and children, Dr. Booth is survived by six grandchildren and other relatives.
A private celebration of his life is to be held later.
Donations in his name may be made to Operation Walk Denver, 950 E. Harvard Ave., Suite 230, Denver, Colo. 80210.
After just over a decade standing outside of what is now known as Stateside Live!, the city’s statue of Philly’s own “Smokin’” Joe Frazier will be the newest Philly boxer to call the Art Museum home. The Philadelphia Art Commission on Wednesday approved a plan detailing the move presented by Creative Philadelphia, the city’s office for the creative sector.
That plan is the latest development in a saga that began before Frazier’s death from liver cancer in 2011. Frazier’s statue was unveiled in 2015 after years of work and advocacy. Fans and supporters considered the lack of a statue an injustice, given that the statue of Rocky Balboa has been in the city for more than 40 years and he’s not even a real person.
Rocky, in fact, has been stationed at the base of the Art Museum steps since 2006. That lengthy run follows installations not only at the top of the steps, but also at the sports complex in South Philadelphia, where the Frazier statue has been located since its inception. And Rocky has been in its current home twice as long as the Frazier statue has existed.
Still, Philly’s Frazier statue has a storied history of its own. Here is how The Inquirer and the Daily News covered it:
Article from Nov 12, 2011 The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) <!— –>
Early advocacy
Frazier’s supporters had long lamented that Philadelphia lacked a memorial to the boxer. In fact, in a June 2011 Daily News poll, nearly 21% of respondents said Smokin’ Joe should be the next Philadelphia legend honored with a statue — second only to Flyers great Bob Clarke, who himself got a statue in 2013.
Calls for a statue intensified after Frazier’s death in November 2011. His loved ones and fans — including fellow Philly boxing great Bernard Hopkins — leaned on the city to memorialize the fallen legend. As Hopkins that year told the Daily News, the city ought to “build the biggest statue in appreciation for all the heart and love” Frazier gave to Philadelphia.
Following his death, Frazier lay in state at the Wells Fargo Center to allow friends, family, and fans to grieve. At Frazier’s funeral, the Rev. Jesse Jackson admonished the city for its lack of respect to Frazier.
“Tell them Rocky was not a champion, Joe Frazier was,” Jackson said to cheers. “Tell them Rocky’s fists were frozen in stone. Joe’s fists were smokin’.”
Article from Mar 9, 2012 Philadelphia Daily News (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) <!— –>
Building momentum despite challenges
In March 2012, two months after what would have been Frazier’s 68th birthday, boxing promoter Joe Hand — a longtime Frazier supporter — publicized plans for a life-size statue of Frazier that would be placed near what was then Xfinity Live! Hand pledged a memorial, at a cost of $200,000, would be built.
Divisions among family members, friends, and business partners emerged, but by that September, Frazier’s family — led by daughters and estate executors Weatta Collins and Renae Martin — took over efforts for a statue.
Hand later bowed out of the proceedings, leaving the memorial up to Frazier’s family with backing from the city via the Fund for Philadelphia. Plans later shifted to a $150,000 funding goal for the statue, with support from the city under then-Mayor Michael Nutter, who was a longtime Frazier fan dating back to his childhood.
“[This is] a very personal moment for me to be in this position and make this announcement about someone I truly admire,” Nutter told The Inquirer in 2012.
Article from Apr 25, 2013 Philadelphia Daily News (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) <!— –>
Setbacks and continued effort
In April 2013, Frazier’s family and the city selected New Hampshire-based sculptor Lawrence J. Nowlan to helm the project. An Overbrook Park native, Nowlan homed in on an image of Frazier knocking down fellow legend Muhammad Ali in the famed 1971 “Fight of the Century” as the statue’s inspiration.
But in late July, Nowlan unexpectedly died at the age of 48. The city proceeded with its Frazier statue plans, and roughly three months later selected Fishtown-based sculptor Stephen Layne as Nowlan’s replacement.
“We all deeply regret the passing of sculptor Lawrence Nowlan and the loss of his artistry in this project,” Nutter said at the time. “But Mr. Nowlan’s untimely passing will not deter us from honoring a great Philadelphian.”
Layne largely stuck with Nowlan’s plan, and in December 2013, the Philadelphia Art Commission approved designs for a statue depicting Frazier during the iconic Ali fight. It was, The Inquirer reported, expected to stand nine feet tall, plus a three-foot base, ultimately to be cast in bronze.
Article from Sep 13, 2015 The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) <!— –>
Frazier’s unveiling
Among the most ardent supporters of the Frazier statue ahead of its unveiling in September 2015 was boxer Hopkins, who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to see it erected. In April 2014, he told the Daily News that Frazier “has a rightful place in Philadelphia history and that should be honored.”
Sculptor Layne, meanwhile, plugged away at the statue for months. The pose, he told the Daily News ahead of its unveiling, showed a “pivotal moment” in Frazier’s career, which itself showed a “blue-collar mentality” that showcased his connection to Philadelphia perfectly.
“I am very happy to know Joe is being honored and memorialized in the city he loved, something that is long overdue,” Ali, Frazier’s longtime arch-nemesis, told the Daily News. “Joe was a great boxer and a worthy opponent in the ring. He always brought his best whenever he stepped inside the ropes. My only regret is that Joe won’t be there to share in the celebration.”
The bitter and persistent cold of recent weeks was so dangerous that various Philadelphia agencies coalesced around one mission: Get the city’s most vulnerable off the streets.
Philadelphia libraries became a key piece in these efforts, with some branches doubling as so-called warming centers for more than 20 days straight in an effort to provide a respite to people who would otherwise be living outside.
The mobilization of what can exceed 10branches during life-threatening cold snaps is largely, though not universally, welcomed by library staff, the community groups that support the workers, and the people who use the spaces.
As outdoor deaths mount in places like New York City, where at least 18 people have died on the streets since Jan. 19, Philadelphia library workers see the initiative as a way to prevent similar outcomes here, where there have been three cold-related deaths since Jan. 20.
But employees say the warming center initiative, in only its second year as a formalized network, leavesbranch staff, from librarians to security, unequipped to help some of the people walking through their doors with complex mental and physical health needs.
“People are feeling tired, feeling very burnt out, the physical, the emotional, and the mental load of not just doing our regular work, but having like this critical service, like lifesaving service, being offered on top of that for 12-plus hours a day has been really, really hard to sustain,” said Liz Gardner, a library worker, speaking as a union steward in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 47’s Local 2186, which represents first-level supervisors, including those at libraries.
There’s the “little stuff,” like how an online map sometimes listed the wrong information in December. Last-minute location changes among the South Philly branches made it confusing for even the self-described information professionals to direct people where to go. At one point, a branch that was not Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible was cast as a warming center, to the chagrin of many.
Library workersand community groups described having to lobby the Free Library to crowdsource snacks and water. The transportation that transfers people to nighttime warming centers after the libraries close has often beenlate, meaning staff have to decide between staying after their shift or leaving people outside, which they don’t want to do.
What’s more, library workers and volunteers say, some people require more than a warm space. People in mental health crises, struggling with substance abuse issues, and requiring wound care need medical support, workers say.
“What [the city is] continuing to do is take advantage of a group of people that care so deeply about the city of Philadelphia and the communities that they serve, and they’ll continue to do it, regardless of if they have the support or not,” said Brett Bessler, business agent for DC 47 Local 2186.
Altogether, the concerns surrounding the warming center system yield existential and moral quandaries: Is this system the best and most humane way to treat some of the city’s most vulnerable people?
Crystal Yates-Gale, the city’s deputy managing director for health and human services, acknowledged some of the challenges described by library staff and volunteers. Many logistical issues, such as location changes, food, and transportation woes, were improving or had been resolved, she said. Some of the concerns regarding staffing might be a matter of miscommunication, she said.
“I think everybody’s exhausted. It’s like Groundhog Day,” Yates-Gale said. “It’s the same thing: Every day you wake up, they’re all just quite exhausted, but everybody’s working toward the same goal.”
Kelly Richards, president and director of the Free Library of Philadelphia, echoed the sentiment that staff have been saving lives. In a statement, he said he appreciated staff efforts and feedback as the Free Library continues “making improvements to better serve our communities.”
‘They need more than a warm building’
Details of who uses the warming centers are limited. Visitors are not asked if they are at a library to escape the cold or for regular library programming.
Three library workers from various corners of the city described some of the daily challenges they have faced at warming centers to The Inquirerunder the condition that they remain anonymous, fearing professional repercussions.
One worker who has lived through various iterations of heating and cooling operations involving librariesdescribed a catatonic man being brought into their branch by first responders, left for staff to figure out his care.
“They need more than a warm building,” the worker said. “These are human beings, and we’re the wrong department to help.”
A worker at a different branch described trying to persuade a man with a festering wound to seek medical intervention. In another instance, when staff told a man he could not set up his sleeping bag on the library floor, he began shouting, telling workers they had to accommodate him.
Library staff say one of the biggest challenges is the lack ofconsistent support for people with complex medical issues.
Yates-Gale said the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services staff focuses support on what are considered “high-volume” warming centers, including the Central Library and the Northeast Regional and Nicetown branches. Mobile teams are available by request.
In other cases, through a partnership with Project HOME, the city’s homeless services office assigns what is called a restroom attendant.
Library workers and volunteers say the current setup is unfair to all involved.
At the South Philadelphia Library on a recent Friday afternoon, a woman yelped in pain as she rubbed a blackened, possibly frostbitten toe. Children played with blocks in a corner as others checked out books.
Library staffers maintain similar scenes have played out at the various warming centers, with workers left to balance the comfort and safety of people there to check out books and use their computers with those of people who might die if kicked out and sent to the streets.
The worker who told of trying to persuade a man to seek medical attention noted that staffers are behind on work and programming has taken a hit.
Kelsey Leon, a harm reductionist who regularly works with homeless Philadelphians with addiction, has been visiting libraries during the cold snap after hearing concerns from librarians, and working to deliver wound care kits to the centers so people there can treat themselves.
Librarians “are so clearly beyond their capacity to handle this,” she said.
The city says it’s listening to feedback
A battle for snacks, workers and volunteers say, has become emblematic of the disconnect between what the Free Library and the city want warming centers to be and what they actually are.
Most people using the service do not bring their own food.
The city initially provided snacks at the overnight warming centers in recreation centers but made no such offerings at the daytime ones at libraries.
When staff and volunteers noted this would mean people going 12 hours without sustenance and offered to fill that gap with crowdsourced snacks and drinks, they faced resistance.
“We were told repeatedly that warming centers at libraries are distinct from shelters, and that is the reason they couldn’t provide food,” said a third library worker, adding the Free Library and the city eventually allowed the outside snacks to come in.
Part of the initial hesitation, according to Yates-Gale, was based on logistical considerations, including protecting library materials and adding cleanup to the plate of security officers who handle maintenance.
The city provided library leadership with lists of food sites, the idea being that people could leave the libraries, get a meal close by, and come back.
Still, Yates-Gale said, the city is listening and adjusting in real time.
Last week, after two weeks of operations, the city brought water and cereal to warming centers. The city says people also have access to water fountains.
The city said it is not giving up on improving warming center conditions. Yates-Gale said that starting Tuesday, the Philadelphia Office of Homeless Services would send reinforcement teams to daytime warming centers to get people to connect to additional services.
The backup cannot come fast enough.
IbrahimBanch,26, has been homeless before, but the cold he has experienced recently is something different.
“The air feels solid. It stands your hair up,” he said. He knew he couldn’t stay outside, so he sought out the warming centers as temperatures dropped. Recently released from prison, he said, he is waiting to be placed in an emergency shelter bed. But the warming centers are a last resort.
He said the city should staff all centers with workers equipped to deal with the mental health needs that many clients have.
“People at the library shouldn’t have to take this responsibility,” Banch said. “It’s not a shelter or a caregiving place.”
Volunteers still eager to help
Erme Maula, with the Friends of Whitman Library in South Philadelphia, echoed the challenging conditions described by workers. She believes it doesn’t have to be this way.
The city’s 54 branches are full of supporters who can coalesce around the warming centers with donations, she said. Volunteers continue to collect toiletries and other essential items for people using the branches for warmth.
As an advanced practice community health nurse, she could see healthcare workers organizing to help people and ease the load of librarians. But it is the sort of effort that would need support from the city.
“People are kind and want to be generous, but they didn’t know you have to take care of what they expected the city to be able to take care of,” Maula said.
Maula and others who spoke to The Inquirer emphasized they want the warming centers to be improved — not to go away.
As with the snack issue, Yates-Gale said the city is responding to feedback in real time.
“Now that we know that there needs to be an adjustment for support staff, we’re ready and able to immediately begin staffing the libraries,” she said.
But that might not be felt by library staff until the next warming center activation. With daytime temperatures finally warming up, the city is slated to begin winding down warming center operations at libraries; nighttime centers will remain open until those temperatures similarly rise.
“I’m really hopeful that we see substantial improvements to make this a more sustainable practice that helps more people in a more meaningful way,” Local 2186’s Gardner said.
A student-made sign hangs in the Conwell Middle School auditorium. The Philadelphia School District is attempting to close Conwell, a magnet 5-8 school in Kensington, and 19 other schools. The community is fighting the closure.
Conwell, in Kensington, is a very small school by any standard. This year, just 109 students are enrolled in a building that holds 500. That’s down from 490 students in the 2015-16 school year and 806 in 2009-10. The school used to occupy two buildings; it has since shrunk to one.
But it is also a rarity — a standalone magnet middle school. Community members and local officials are mounting a fight against closing the school, which they say has committed teachers and staff members who help students excel against the odds.
The district’s plan, which the school board is expected to vote on this winter, calls for Conwell students to move to AMY at James Martin, another citywide admissions magnet in Port Richmond, which just opened in a new building with only 200 students. Meanwhile, the district has proposed closing its only other free-standing magnet middle school, AMY Northwest. No changes have been proposed for Philadelphia’s four other magnet middle schools, all of which are attached to high schools.
Neighborhood issues, enrollment declines
Conwell’s enrollment issues are tied closely to its setting.
The building sits on Clearfield Street in the heart of Kensington. Fewer and fewer parents have been choosing to send their kids into ground zero of the city’s opioid epidemic, despite Conwell’s myriad partnerships, the outside investments it has attracted into its facility in recent years, and the school’s long history of excellence.
The exterior of Conwell Middle School in Kensington, photographed in August.
Parents, neighbors, students, and politicians, however, are furious that the district is choosing to abandon Conwell and the neighborhood.
“If this school closes, it won’t just be students who feel the loss,” Conwell student Nicolas Zeno told officials at a district meeting Thursday. “It’ll be the community. If the concern is safety, then invest. If the concern is environment, then repair.”
Community member Vaughn Tinsley, who runs Founding Fatherz, a nonprofit mentoring group, suggested closing Conwell would harm its students.
“These students have been victims,” Tinsley said. “These students have seen and witnessed things they shouldn’t have witnessed. Most adults haven’t seen some of the things that these kids have seen, and yet still they come here, yet they’re still committed to excellence, yet they still stand up and still do what they’re supposed to do in the classroom. How dare we take that away from them?”
Watlington has proposed using Conwell as “swing space” — district property that other schools can move into temporarily if their buildings require repairs.
Tosin Efunnuga, Conwell’s nurse, wiped tears from her eyes as she beseeched district officials to keep the school open.
“To have those doors close would be such a disservice,” Efunnuga said. “We need 100 years more.”
Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, whose district includes Conwell, said she was “angry” and “frustrated” by the recommendation to close the school.
“It’s underutilized because of what’s happening on the outside,” Lozada said at the Conwell meeting. “There’s nothing wrong with what is happening on the inside other than successful academic learning, support for families. We are saying to these families, we are punishing them because as a city, we can’t respond to the public safety issues that we have on the outside, and that is just not fair.”
‘What are y’all doing?’
Emotions ran high inside the Conwell auditoriumlast week.
Even before Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill finished his presentation about the rationale for the closures and the specific plan for Conwell, parents burst out with concerns.
“What are y’all doing? Y’all making a mess,” one parent shouted. “You say the building is old. So what? It’s clean in here.”
Another said her child would not be going to AMY at James Martin, formerly known as AMY5.
“I don’t think you understand how much of a battle there is between Conwell and AMY5,” the parent said. “You don’t know the battles these kids have with each other.”
Conwell has a strong alumni network — a rarity for a middle school — that has turned out in force to support the school since the proposed closure was announced.
Alexa Sanchez, Class of 2017, grew up in Kensington and came to Conwell as a bright but unruly student — sheacknowledges that she got in fights, egged the school, and disrespected teachers. But Conwell is rooted in its neighborhood, Sanchez said, with dedicated staff who helped her rise to earn a college degree and a good job in business.
“They didn’t give up on students like me,” Sanchez said. “My future didn’t look promising at first, but in the long run, it did. You shouldn’t really close the school on a community that doesn’t look promising if you’re not from here.”
Other alumni, including Robin Cooper, president of the district’s principals union, and Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, chair of Council’s Education Committee, have spoken out for Conwell.
Conwell “shows up” for Kensington and the city, running a food pantry, hosting Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel’s swearing-in ceremony and an event marking Cherelle L. Parker’s 100th day as mayor, noted Erica Green, the school’s award-winning principal. Staff and students participate in neighborhood cleanups and advocate for help amid the opioid crisis.
“We are what the city needs,” Green told the school board recently. During Green’s tenure, she has helped win money for a new schoolyard, a new science, technology, engineering, and math lab, and more.
“These investments were made for Kensington students,” Green said. “We owe it to them, to their neighborhood. Do not push them out once the neighborhood changes and thrives. Conwell’s success is rooted in its people, its history, and its impact.”
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker speaks during an event to mark her 100th day in office at Conwell Middle School in Kensington in April 2024.
Philadelphia and state officials awarded more than $6 million in taxpayer funds over the last five years to a politically connected but financially unstable anti-violence nonprofit, despite repeated warnings from city grant managers about improper spending and mismanagement, an Inquirer investigation has found.
The group — New Options More Opportunities, or NOMO Foundation — received city and state anti-violence grants and locally administered federal dollars to expand its youth programs and launch a new affordable housing program. The money fueled NOMO’s rapid rise from a small, grassroots outfit into a sprawling nonprofit that took on expenses it ultimately could not afford.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has publicly touted NOMO’s work in the community, and she further boosted its profile by naming its director to her transition team upon taking office. But behind the scenes, Parker administration staffers watched NOMO face mounting financial pressures over the last two years.
In that time, the organization has been hit with multiple eviction filings and an IRS tax lien, and had to lay off staff and suspend programming. Most significantly, NOMO had to terminate its housing initiative last year — displacing all 23 low-income households that had been its tenants.
The warning signs were evident years earlier. Records obtained under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law show that city grant managers expressed concerns as far back as 2021 about NOMO’s lack of financial controls, incomplete balance sheets, and chronic inability to provide basic documents. As recently as last year, the city was unaware who sat on the group’s board.
Yet records show city officials kept propping up the group with more funds, without successfully putting in place the kind of structural support that might have kept it from foundering. Last year, the city sought to award a $700,000 federal homelessness prevention contract to NOMO, but the nonprofit was unable to meet the conditions of the contract and the funds were never disbursed. Officials also proposed writing more funding to NOMO into last year’s city budget as a last-minute line item. That effort failed.
In a September interview, NOMO executive director Rickey Duncan blamed city officials for funding delays.
“I was breaking my back to make sure those young people were getting housed,” Duncan said. “We built a tab that was so big we couldn’t pay no more, because the city didn’t pay.”
Rickey Duncan surprised a group of young women with apartments in a December 2022 file photograph. Last year, NOMO gave up the leases for the apartments citing a lack of funding.
Much of the money awarded to NOMO came via Philadelphia’s Community Expansion Grant (CEG) program, launched in 2021 to respond to record gun violence and support alternatives to policing. NOMO was one of only two initial grantees to receive the maximum $1 million award, which was meant to help the group scale up its operations and serve more at-risk youth.
NOMO’s financial records detail spending that quickly led to trouble after it received the first city grant, starting with the decision to devote most of the funds to launching a costly housing initiative while opening sprawling new youth centers to expand its after-school programs to new neighborhoods.
Duncan signed annual building leases totaling $750,000, and increased his own salary from $48,000 in 2021 to $144,000 the next year. (Duncan said that his pay — now $165,000, according to the most recent tax filing — is below average for an organization of NOMO’s size and was previously lower because he was volunteering half his time.)
The records contain no evidence that city grant managers questioned the lease expenses or conducted an evaluation of whether the upstart housing program was an appropriate addition to the organization’s core mission of offering after-school programming.
By the start of last year, a tax lien and lawsuits over unpaid rent threatened NOMO’s existence. Still, Duncan asked the city in January 2025 to reimburse the roughly $9,000 cost of two Sixers season tickets he purchased a year earlier. He explained in a memo that the tickets were “an innovative tool for workforce development.”
“Season tickets to the Sixers are not an acceptable programmatic expense,” the grant program manager responded in an email.
Records show that city officials discovered in April that a $35,000 IRS lien, filed four months earlier, had rendered NOMO ineligible for grant funding. Grant administrators sent an email to NOMO staffers with a warning written in all-caps: “CEASE ALL SPENDING.”
Duncan said that the lien was the result of a missing signature on a tax form, and that it was eventually resolved at no cost. But in a June email to Public Safety Director Adam Geer and other city officials, he accused the city of pushing his organization to the brink of collapse.
“I am respectfully requesting a written response detailing how a tax [lien] escalated into a comprehensive investigation into the NOMO Foundation’s financial health,” Duncan wrote. “NOMO has been disrespected, attacked, and harassed, by members of this office on this and previous occasions.”
City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, speaking on Jan. 20. Regarding NOMO, he says, “It is crucial that any concerns are taken seriously.”
In a statement responding to The Inquirer’s findings, Johnson praised NOMO and credited the organization with “working with children throughout Philadelphia, intervening in cycles of violence, and literally saving lives in our community.”
Johnson, who was listed as a reference on the group’s most recent grant application, added: “Regarding any allegations raised against Mr. Duncan and NOMO, I am confident that the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Public Safety will review these matters thoroughly, fairly, and professionally. It is crucial that any concerns are taken seriously and examined through the proper channels, with facts guiding the outcome.”
A spokesperson for Parker referred questions to the Philadelphia Office of Public Safety, which manages CEG grants.
In a written response, a spokesperson for the department, Jennifer Crandall, praised NOMO’s efforts.
Rickey Duncan (left) and then Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker at a news conference that outlined Parker’s transition team and the plans that she had for her administration on Nov. 9, 2023.
“Not only has NOMO delivered on grant-funded programs, it has become an important partner on city initiatives like interventions with at-risk youth,” Crandall wrote. She cited evaluations by an unnamed third party that credited NOMO for providing “holistic support to participants … beyond the immediate program activities” and “addressing the broader social determinants of violence.”
Crandall did not respond to a follow-up request for the evaluation.
Duncan gave The Inquirer a 2023 report prepared by four nonprofit partners that evaluated CEG recipients in their first year, with the intention of documenting program goals and activities. The report states that the evaluation was based on a single site visit, interviews with staff, and a youth focus group, and that it was then too soon to evaluate impact. It noted that NOMO had retained more than half its participants over the grant cycle and had created “an environment that is welcoming and comfortable, so that participants willingly show up.”
The assessment did not address the viability of the housing program, nor did it cite any metrics that might be used to gauge whether NOMO’s programs had reduced community violence.
Duncan also sent The Inquirer written statements from two landlords indicating that their court cases against him had been resolved, and that they support NOMO’s mission.
He says NOMO is now financially stable, despite three years of tax returns showing the nonprofit in the red. He said NOMO’s programs now serve about 140 children a year across its three locations — about the same as when it was operating in just one location in 2019 and before the city awarded the expansion grants.
Laura Otten, a nonprofit consultant and former director of La Salle University’s Nonprofit Center, said it was clear the city’s grant awards to NOMO had not fulfilled their stated goals.
“It obviously didn’t work if they ended up having to evict people,” she said. “Where is the evidence that this grant has improved the capacity of the organization?”
Dawan Williams (left), vice president of restorative justice for the Nomo Foundation, and Rickey Duncan, Nomo CEO and executive director, in one of the student spaces at the foundation on South Broad Street on April 13, 2023.
‘Significant weaknesses noted’
When Parker laid out her priorities in her first budget address before City Council in spring 2024, she mentioned Duncan and NOMO by name as she praised the grassroots anti-violence organizations “working each day to lessen the pain and the trauma caused by gun violence.” She also promised to reward the various groups with an additional $24 million in grant funding.
It was another highlight of Duncan’s well-documented redemption story. By his own account, he dropped out of South Philadelphia High School in 1994 to sell drugs and promote concerts, earning the nickname “Rickey Rolex” for his flashy style. He was arrested the next year for robbery and spent more than a decade in prison. After he was released in 2015, Duncan began volunteering with NOMO, then a fledgling nonprofit, and eventually took the reins.
“My vision started off, to be honest, just wanting to help kids and give back to a city that I took from,” Duncan said in a 2023 interview with The Inquirer.
NOMO began as a largely volunteer-run effort operating in borrowed space on less than $50,000 a year, tax returns show.
In 2019, the tiny nonprofit submitted a grant application to Philadelphia Works, the city’s workforce development board, which was tasked with distributing about $6 million in federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) grants. NOMO proposed after-school programs that would teach up to 125 kids everything from neuroscience to software development to road construction.
Philadelphia Works awarded NOMO $209,000, skipping the standard financial review in order to disburse funds that would have otherwise expired.
“It breathed life into us,” Duncan said.
Rickey Duncan speaks with kids at a NOMO after-school program in a 2021 file photograph.
By 2021, NOMO was receiving half a million dollars annually in TANF money — enough to lease a 7,000-square-foot office space on North Broad Street and support programs for more than 100 young people. And Duncan’s star was rising as a charismatic and credible voice who came up from the same streets that he and others were working to rid of violence. Elected officials and news media alike turned to him for quotes and photo ops amid a surge in shootings.
In December 2021, then-Mayor Jim Kenney announced a $155 million investment in gun violence prevention funding. The plan included a $22 million grant program, with more than half that focused on “supporting midsized organizations with a proven track record” to “expand their reach, deepen their impact, and achieve scale.”
Duncan’s scrappy, homespun nonprofit was exactly the type of group city officials had in mind when they created the CEG program, and his grant application cited support from State Reps. Danilo Burgos and Elizabeth Fiedler. Although 30 other nonprofits received funding, NOMO was one of only two organizations awarded the maximum grant of $1 million — a transformative sum that would roughly triple NOMO’s operating budget.
In his first application for the CEG funds, Duncan pledged to expand his “trauma informed” after-school program to South Philadelphia by offering paid work experience, academic support, and intensive case management. The $1.4 million proposed budget projected the organization would spend about $1 million annually on staff salaries and participation incentives for teens, while spending $94,000 a year to cover added lease costs.
NOMO devoted just one sentence of its 15-page grant application to describing a new affordable housing initiative “to combat youth homelessness.” The proposal did not include what metrics would be used to judge that program’s success.
Despite the brief mention, the housing initiative would become the organization’s largest single budget item, by far.
After securing the city grant money, NOMO took on a $552,000 annual lease for a newly built 27,000-square-foot West Philadelphia apartment complex near 40th Street and Lancaster Avenue. It also signed a $192,000-per-year lease for a 17,000-square-foot former culinary school on South Broad Street.
The deals left NOMO with youth centers in North, South, and West Philly, each with large event spaces that could host its programming. Duncan also planned to market the venues for private events — such as weddings and Eagles watch parties — to generate additional revenue.
NOMO students bounced a basketball in the ballroom at the nonprofit’s South Broad Street youth center. The space is offered for event rentals, which Duncan said can generate crucial unrestricted income.
If city officials had concerns about NOMO’s costly expansion strategy or the viability of his plan to lease out the youth centers for parties, they are not reflected in the available records.
However, staffers at the Urban Affairs Coalition — a nonprofit the city had contracted to manage the first round of the grant program — flagged NOMO’s general lack of financial controls in a December 2021 fiscal assessment of prospective grantees.
“Significant weaknesses noted,” an Urban Affairs staffer wrote of NOMO in an email to then-anti-violence director Erica Atwood and other city officials. “No audited financials. No balance sheets presented even in the [IRS Form] 990s. Separation of Authority: Basically non-existent.”
That month, the city instructed Urban Affairs to proceed with the scheduled grant advance of $200,000 and to work with NOMO to establish a remediation plan. Instead, grant administrators wrote that they were reassured after NOMO installed a new chief operating officer — who left the organization the following year.
By the end of the grant cycle, Duncan was able to deliver a public relations win for NOMO. He appeared on Good Day Philadelphia in December 2022 to launch the housing plan with a surprise giveaway of the first of 23 brand-new apartments for young women, many of them single mothers.
Duncan said NOMO’s housing program would cover 70% of rent costs for 18 to 24 months while enrollees seek employment and eventually move out on their own.
“They’ll be getting their credit together so they can prepare to become a homeowner,” he told Fox 29. “We need money to finish doing this.”
Rickey Duncan, CEO and executive director, at Nomo on South Broad Street on April 13, 2023.
Billion-dollar dream
The city renewed NOMO’s grant in January 2024, this time for $850,000. But a tax return the same year showed the organization was already $710,000 in the red.
Months later, the nonprofit faced its first eviction suit, targeting its North Broad headquarters, and had to cut a check for $275,000 in back rent — the equivalent of one-third of its city grant money for that year.
By the fall of 2024, records show NOMO had spent only about 5% of the $150,000 initially budgeted for youth incentives, outside activities, equipment, or program supplies. The city withheld most of NOMO’s fourth-quarter grant funding, reducing the nonprofit’s award by $170,000 to a total of $680,000 for that year.
Still, the city re-upped the group for a third grant in 2025, this time for $600,000.
By January 2025, financial records show NOMO had virtually stopped spending on youth programming. It laid off most of its staff as landlords for all three youth centers took legal action against the nonprofit over hundreds of thousands of dollars of back rent.
NOMO sought to justify the expense of Sixers season tickets with a narrative submitted to the city, which denied the expense. Duncan said the majority of the tickets went to youth participants and members of the community.
Around then, NOMO received an infusion of support in the form of a $950,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. But the TANF funds had run out, and the organization’s problems continued. City officials had NOMO submit a formal “performance enhancement plan” last July.
Duncan said in September that NOMO had cut costs, hired a new accounting firm, and was working toward “full financial stability.” It resolved two eviction cases by reducing its real estate footprint — downsizing its North Philly headquarters into basement offices and terminating its affordable housing program. Duncan said the former tenants moved in with family members or were transferred to the nonprofit Valley Youth House, which provides transitional housing.
After The Inquirer asked Duncan about the most recent lawsuit over back rent, this one for $312,000, his landlord filed notice in court that the matter was resolved. Duncan said keeping three youth centers and marketing the NOMO spaces for special events are key parts of his business plan as the organization continues to settle its debts.
The spate of lawsuits has not dampened the city’s enthusiasm for Duncan’s nonprofit. Crandall, the spokesperson for the Philadelphia Office of Public Safety, said NOMO remains eligible to receive funds when a new round of grants are awarded this year.
And with the housing initiative scrapped, NOMO is left pursuing its original mission — anti-violence programming for city youth. The organization’s renegotiated leases for its three youth centers now total $360,000 a year, roughly half what NOMO had been paying.
In a 2023 interview, Duncan acknowledged that he underestimated the financial demands of running an organization on a citywide scale.
“As a kid you think, … ‘If I can get a million dollars, I’ll be rich.’ And then you’re broke again,” he said then. “I had a billion-dollar dream. I didn’t realize it was a billion-dollar dream.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
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The Black activists and community members who brought the President’s House Site into being are not letting its history be removed quietly.
A couple of hundred supporters and local leaders organized by the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition rallied at the President’s House Site on Tuesday afternoon to demand the restoration of its slavery memorial after the National Park Service removed all of its informational and educational materials last month.
“History is not merely a collection of celebrated moments,” said Catherine Hicks, president of the NAACP Philadelphia Branch. “This action is a disservice to our city, our nation and denies future generations in the chance to learn from our history, fostering an environment of ignorance rather than understanding.”
“This site is historic, holy ground,” said Michael Coard, an attorney and founding member of ATAC. “So now what? Now, we fight the good fight.”
Lawyer Michael Coard speaks at a rally at the President’s House Site in response to the removal of the President’s House exhibit.
ATAC was instrumental to the creation of President’s House on Independence Mall in 2010, a site that honors the nine people enslaved by George Washington while he lived at the precursor to the White House. The structure at Sixth and Market Streets featured video displays, illustrations and text-filled panels about the Atlantic slave trade and life under slavery, and detailed Washington’s dogged support for the institution.
Those exhibits were dismantled on Jan. 22, following directives from President Donald Trump’s administration to review and remove displays in National Parks that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
Thirteen exhibits from the President’s House were flagged for review this summer.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration filed a federal lawsuit against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron, and their respective agencies, on the day the panels were removed. The complaint argues that dismantling the exhibits was an “arbitrary and capricious” act that violated a 2006 cooperative agreement between the city and the federal government.
“Attempts to unilaterally rewrite history will deprive residents and visitors” of the collar counties “of the full and accurate picture of the nation’s founding to which they are entitled,” the brief says.
The panels are currently being held in a storage facility owned by the National Park Service that is adjacent to the National Constitution Center, according to a legal filing by the Trump administration.
People gather for a rally at the President’s House Site in response to the removal of the President’s House exhibit in Old City.
Can’t hide the truth
Ever since the panels were taken down with crowbars and wrenches, there has been an outpouring of support for the memorial to be restored, and outrage toward the Trump administration.
“If you want to hide the truth of slavery in Philadelphia, you might as well tear down the whole city because it was built on the blood of my people. You cannot hide the truth,” said Solomon Jones, a radio host and columnist for The Inquirer.
“To erase slavery is to erase American history. That would be to erase Mount Vernon, to erase Wall Street … because those structures were built by enslaved labor,” said Yvonne Studevan, a seventh-generation descendant of Mother Bethel AME’s Bishop Richard Allen.
Judy Butler, a South Philadelphia resident, said she was both heartbroken and angry once she learned that the President’s House exhibits were going to be removed.
“I felt violated, disrespected,” she said.
Butler, 66, said she’s been inspired watching from afar as people in Minnesota have braved the frigid temperatures to protest, observe and resist ICE’s occupation of the Minneapolis area. Coming to ATAC’s rally was something she felt she had to do.
“They’re taking down our history. … How deplorable is that?” she said.
People gather for a rally at the President’s House Site in response to the removal of the President’s House exhibit in Old City.
Two Philadelphia men on Tuesday were convicted of first-degree murder for gang-related shootings that left three dead and five others wounded, including a man who was paralyzed after being shot 19 times, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said.
Chris Byard, 27, was found guilty by a jury of three counts of first-degree murder and related offenses, and was sentenced to serve three consecutive life terms, Sunday said.
Daquan Bishop, 28, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and related offenses, and was sentenced to serve two consecutive life terms.
Byard and Bishop were members of the “6600” gang and they were trying to shoot members of another gang, Sunday said. The other gang was called “Greatah,” KYW reported in 2023 after both men were arrested and charged.
Byard and Bishop were found guilty of the Nov. 27, 2021, killing of 24-year-old Angel Rivera, who was gunned down on the 500 block of West Duncannon Avenue.
Both men were also found guilty of fatally shooting 23-year-old Tymir Johnson on the 3100 block of Barnett Street on Dec. 15, 2021. Two other men were wounded in that shooting.
Byard was also convicted of the Jan. 11, 2022, killing of 21-year-old Rashaan Frazier, who was gunned down on the 4000 block of Aldine Street. Two other men were wounded.
In the Frazier killing, Byard and others were targeting another man and killed Frazier by mistake.
Byard was involved in a fourth shooting that left a man paralyzed from the waist down after being hit 19 times by bullets, Sunday said.
Another defendant, 27-year-old Daquan Bethea, pleaded guilty in October to attempted murder and related crimes and was sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
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