Word count: 799 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
Craziness is breaking out at both ends of my Philadelphia journey. In Mt. Airy, my new neighborhood, the one to which I moved to escape constant gunfire, one or more individuals cruise the streets trying to lure children into cars.
Meanwhile, back in my old neighborhood of Grays Ferry, in separate incidents, a police officer was butchered and two teenagers were shot.
Nothing like life in the big city.
I was hoping that after moving up to bucolic Mt. Airy, my days of writing about nasty evil neighborhood doings would be over.
I was wrong.
For at least the last several weeks and maybe since November, children in Mt. Airy and Germantown have been approached by one or more men. The really scary thing is that police are not sure how many would-be kidnappers are involved, and now parents whose kids would normally walk freely up and down the tree-lined streets have to worry about real-life bogeymen.
“There have been five incidents where a B/M [black male] has attempted to lure elementary school students,” states a 14th District Crime Bulletin. “On two incidents there has been a similar method of operation and general description of their vehicles.”
The incidents have taken place in the early morning hours. The average age of complainants is between 7 and 14. Given that the cops are not sure just how many creeps they are dealing with, the bulletin urges officers to “investigate any suspicious persons in the general area operating a yellow or gold vehicle or white Nissan Maxima.”
Thanks to the sharp eyes of a crossing guard at the corner of Ogontz and Haines, police arrested 19-year-old Daniel Bunning after the man tried to get a 15-year-old girl into a car on Thursday, Jan. 25.
After I gave her a call to find out what, if any, community meetings had been convened to deal with these crazies, City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, who represents the Mt. Airy-Germantown district, called the 14th to find out for herself what was going on. What they told her was particularly disturbing.
News of the attempted abductions may have drawn copycats to my neighborhood, attracted by the inherent danger of looking for kids amidst an acute police presence.
“It seems quite unusual,” adds her chief of staff, Steven Vaughn, “that we have a concentration of stalkers. It is quite strange that you have folks trying to stalk in this magnitude.”
In addition to remaining vigilant, Vaughn is also cautioning the people of Germantown and Mt. Airy to remain as calm as possible. There have been a number of crank calls about this whole deal.
“Kids should make sure they walk in clusters and report any and all suspicious activity to a nearby adult, any activity wherein a person tries to lure them into a vehicle. But you have to be careful. Just because people are driving around looking does not make them stalkers. We don’t want to frighten people so they are scared every time a car drives by.”
Despite Bunning’s arrest and assurances offered by officials, the neighborhood remains a wary place, where strangers are viewed with a much keener eye.
“I haven’t seen anything like this in the 10 years I have lived in West Mt. Airy,” says Laurie Beck, executive director of the West Mt. Airy Neighborhood Association, who is helping to coordinate communications between the police and area residents. “The only thing we have had was the occasional flasher near the railroad tracks. Nothing like this.”
As bad as it is to live with this fear for our children, I suppose things could be worse. They are not being shot. Back in Grays Ferry, around the corner from my old house, it was business as usual Tuesday, with two kids hit by gunfire. Fortunately, they will live to tell about their ordeal.
The same cannot be said for police officer Quinn Rose, whose eviscerated body was found by police after he failed to show up for his midnight shift. A police spokesperson says that investigators talking about Rose’s homicide have mentioned that it was a particularly brutal crime. Police sources say that Rose was likely a victim of a domestic dispute with a male lover. As of Wednesday morning, police were questioning a man in connection with the murder, but had yet to file any charges.
As horrible as Rose’s murder was, reaction to his death by his neighbors flies in the face of the usual stereotype of Grays Ferry.
Rose, a black man, was mourned by his white neighbors in a part of the city usually given publicity only for the outbursts of racial tensions. The heartfelt sorrow of white folk for a black man is a much-needed ray of light at a very dark time.
