No one was ever held accountable for the 1985 police bombing of the radical group MOVE and the subsequent fire that killed 11 people and incinerated a Philadelphia neighborhood.
No one, that is, except the one surviving member of the MOVE group, Ramona Africa, who escaped the blaze only to serve seven years in prison for inciting riot.A decade later, a jury was considering whether the city and two ex-officials should be held responsible for the May 13, 1985, bombing.
The eight-member jury heard seven weeks of testimony from former mayor W. Wilson Goode and a battery of experts. Jurors got the case Wednesday and went home early for the weekend on Friday. Deliberations resumed Monday.
On Thursday, the panelists picked a foreman - one of the only two jurors from Philadelphia - and asked to see an enlarged photo of a bunker that sat atop the MOVE home and videotapes of the police dropping a homemade satchel-bomb from a helicopter.
Six adults and five children living in the MOVE house died and 61 homes burned after the police helicopter dropped a bomb on the house and allowed the fire to burn.
Police were trying to serve arrest warrants against four of the members, including Africa, who were accused of harassing their neighbors.
Africa, the only adult to survive the fire, and relatives of two dead MOVE members are seeking unspecified damages in a civil suit against the city, former Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor and former Fire Commissioner William Richmond.