'Round About Now

In West Oak Lane, teens learn the landscaping trade

2009-07-10T13:24:00.004-04:00

One hazy afternoon, a green pickup truck pulls in front of Elizabeth Peoples' home in West Oak Lane, and out jumps supervisor Jeff Daniels and two teen workers, all in matching T-shirts. They unload lawn mowers and hedge clippers and begin to maintain the beauty they had created a few weeks earlier.

The crew, Teens Go Green, a new venture operated by neighborhood teenagers, has a mission this summer: to make West Oak Lane the most attractive neighborhood in the city.

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(Photo credit: Elizabeth Robertson, Inquirer)

Damon Allen Jr. carries on boxing tradition

2009-06-30T10:37:00.002-04:00

In the crowded basement of Shepherd Recreation Center, Damon Allen Jr., 16, drives his fists into a heavy bag, his movements a blur. Sweat darkens his orange T-shirt, as his trainer, his 81-year-old great-grandfather, barks encouragement.

"Come on, Dame," says the gray-haired Mitchell Allen, former fighter and longtime trainer, looking on through his bifocals.

"Rhythm, rhythm. That's it. Jab. Jab. Right."

Nearby, Allen's father, Damon Allen Sr., 35, a former boxer, now trainer - who by day works at the airport fueling planes - guides the punches of a young boy two bags down.

On the other side of the ring, Allen's mother, Rasheeda Gantz, a USA Boxing judge and rec center employee, sits at a table, managing the West Philadelphia gym.

Allen, at 125 pounds, ranked second in the country in the male junior division and known in the ring as "Baby Dame," just returned from the National Junior Olympics in Denver.

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(Photo credit: Michael Bryant, Inquirer)

Under summer heat, some pools remain shuttered

2009-06-27T21:32:00.007-04:00

On hazy, sun-soaked afternoons last summer, Andrew Christman, 35, regularly took his young son, Jozef, to the Fishtown neighborhood pool to splash in his water wings. But, because of city budget cuts, that recreation center pool is now closed. So is the Hancock pool, also a few blocks away. And so is the Cione pool, roughly a mile from his home.

As Philadelphia faced a fiscal crisis, there were predictions that only 10 of the city's 73 pools would open. Through private and public donations and money restored to the budget, the city this summer will open 46. The openings began this week and will continue through Friday, some marked by ribbon-cutting, music, and water ice.

In communities like Fishtown, where less than half of the pools in the Recreation Department district will open this summer, some residents are still questioning how the city decided which pools to reopen and which to shutter.

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(Photo credit: Akira Suwa, Inquirer Photographer)

Remembering MJ

2009-06-27T13:21:00.002-04:00

Growing up in North Philadelphia, asking mom for money for the latest Right On! magazine, running to the corner store with the money, running home with the magazine, up in my bedroom, pulling this poster gently from the centerfold, deciding where it hang it, finally taping it to the wall on the side of the bed, staring at it, listening to Michael Jackson croon P.Y.T. on my record player in the light blue box, dancing, smiling.

Phila. caterer's specialty: Second chances

2009-06-17T10:45:00.004-04:00

In the auditorium of the African American Museum in Philadelphia, with an hour left to prepare, David Simms buzzes from table to table: smoothing the blue tablecloths, centering the silver candelabras, fluffing the folded napkins blooming from their wine glasses.

"The glasses should be right next to the knives," Simms directs his tuxedoed waitstaff.

For the lunch for 100, Simms' sixth catering job of the week, he has prepared a menu of soul food, gourmet-style, including grilled salmon with orange pineapple demi-glace, baked macaroni and smoked Gouda cheese, collard greens, and "David's" potato salad, "because it's made my way," he explains with a wink.

Helping Simms put out the water glasses is Nasim Brown, who has a prison record for selling drugs. Hiring him is another thing Simms does "my way."

Twelve years ago, Simms, 43, lost his friends, his car, his catering business - everything he had - to a crack addiction.

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(Photo credit: Tom Gralish, Philadelphia Inquirer)

Tragedy in Feltonville

2009-06-11T21:04:00.018-04:00

Under a light rain, two families gather around a makeshift memorial of teddy bears, candles and flowers, leaning on each other, crying, begging each other why.

Yesterday evening, around 7:30, on the narrow street of Third near Annsbury, Latoya Smith, 22, was sitting outside with her 11-month old baby, Remedy, watching niece Aaliyah Griffin play hand games with her friend Gina Marie Rosario, from two doors down, when a car fleeing police jumped the curb and mowed them down.

Two of the children were pronounced dead at the scene; another at the hospital.

Smith, taken to the hospital in critical condition, died this morning.

“It’s crazy. It’s senseless,” said Ted Canada, Smith's father and grandfather to Remedy and Aaliyah. “They were kids, innocent kids, playing together and this idiot jumps the curb. I can’t find no sense in that.”

Canada, a member of the antiviolence group Men United for a Better Philadelphia, has been touched by tragedy before. His son Lamar was murdered in 2005. Two years ago, another granddaughter was killed in a traffic accident.

Moments before the car jumped the curb, blocks away, police say two men stole a Yamaha motorcycle at gunpoint. Ivan Rodriguez, 20, rode off on the motorcycle. Donta Cradock, 18, who has a long arrest record, fled in a silver Pontiac Grand Am.

When an officer pulled behind the Pontiac at a light, police say Cradock sped off.

The car ended up on Third Street, wedged between a rowhouse and a utility pole, killing four.

Cradock and Rodriguez have been arrested and charged with murder.

“It hasn’t hit me yet,” Canada said standing on the corner, surrounded by family and neighbors, holding back tears. “I’m just … the only thing that holds me up is knowing that those babies are in the arms of the Lord.”

Two doors away, Tammy Rosario, stands outside, draped in her brother’s hooded sweatshirt, clutching a rosary, trembling.

“My daughter loved to dance,” she cries, remembering Gina Marie. “She was so bright and now she’s gone. She was only 7! I saw everything that happened. I will never forget it. I will never forget it! My daughter, my daughter is gone. My son has lost his sibling. My daughter was a beautiful girl….

“I was watching her,” she continues, her brother's arm around her shoulder, “and the car just came and hit her. I had two beautiful children. Now I just have one. She was my baby. She was going to be 8 soon. She was going to third grade.

“She was playing where the bears are. When I called her, it was too late.”

Read more on this story in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Once-homeless Penn student aims high

2009-06-02T11:22:00.003-04:00

Every day last summer, Steven Vaughn-Lewis would update his Facebook status: 64 more days . . . 63 . . . 62 . . . counting the days "until Penn."

What one freshman year will do.

Today, the tall and lanky 19-year-old who had barely left his Strawberry Mansion neighborhood has his sights on visiting China, a career in international affairs, and, at last, a driver's license.

For Steven, the University of Pennsylvania opened doors in ways this former foster child never imagined.

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Random Shot - Cat Nap

2009-05-26T14:43:00.002-04:00

Under a gray sky, the lunchtime rush has quieted along Callowhill Street, a block of bistros and lofts. On the steps of an office building, a man lies still, bundled in a blanket. No where to go. No where to be.

Condoleezza Rice talks to Phila. students

2009-05-05T12:32:00.013-04:00

When Condoleezza Rice was 3, she could read music before she could read words.

"It was always clear in my mind that I was going to be a great concert musician," the former secretary of state told students yesterday at Bodine High School for International Affairs in North Philadelphia. "I studied and worked hard at piano."

But as a sophomore at the Aspen Institute, surrounded by music proteges, Rice had a "crisis of confidence."

"I met 12-year-olds who could play from sight everything it took me all year to learn. All of a sudden, I thought, I may end up playing piano bar someplace, or maybe I'd get to play at Nordstrom's ... but the one thing I'm not going to do is play Carnegie Hall."

Before long, Rice found her true passion: Russia.

Rice's journey, from a young girl in the segregated South to one of the most powerful women in the world, was at the heart of her talk yesterday afternoon during a schoolwide assembly at Bodine.

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(Photo credit: Akira Suwa, Inquirer Staff Photographer)

While reporting ... Philadelphia Industrial Correction Center

2009-04-29T15:03:00.005-04:00

Inside the lobby of the county jail, young girls in stylish clothes and shiny lips held their crying babies, waiting to see daddy.

'Not safe on your own lawn'. Residents of Lincoln Drive are increasingly upset by speeders

2009-04-17T13:25:00.002-04:00

On Easter afternoon, Sharon Boyd was standing on her front lawn in West Mount Airy, smiling at her husband and son as they moved new 10-foot columns onto their once-enclosed porch.

After nearly two years of dealing with insurance adjusters, lawyers, building inspectors, and contractors, the Boyds were finally rebuilding the porch - wrecked when a speeding SUV rammed into a traffic pole on Lincoln Drive, launched into the air, and crash-landed inside it.

As Boyd eyed the traffic, her dog, Peaches, in her arms, she thought, "Not again."

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(Photo credit: MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Inquirer Staff Photographer)

A lively competition afoot. World Irish Dance Championships step into Phila.

2009-04-11T12:21:00.004-04:00

In the lobby of the Kimmel Center, dancer Charaina Kelly, her hair a mass of blond curls, was panting, a light sweat shining on her forehead.

Dressed in a turquoise and black dress, her face sparkling with turquoise eye shadow and fuschia lipstick, Kelly had just finished a heavy jig in the senior girls competition of the World Irish Dance Championships.

"I'm happy with it," Kelly, 24, with an accent by way of Belfast, said of her performance. "I love the competition, just the buzz of having done well."

For most of her life, Kelly has been dancing. Last year, she placed 10th in the world. Then, three weeks later, she ruptured an Achilles tendon, leaving her "in plaster" for five months.

This year's competition marks her comeback. She's hoping to make the top 25.

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(Photo credit: Sarah Glover, Staff Photographer)

Student's article leads to desk duty for officer

2009-04-01T12:14:00.002-04:00

By Kia Gregory
Inquirer Staff Writer

A Philadelphia police officer has been put on desk duty after he was quoted spouting his disgust for the black residents in the community he patrolled.

During a ride-along with a Temple University senior journalism student, the officer, William Thrasher, who is white, was quoted as calling the residents of the predominantly black 22d District "animals" and the violence that happens there "typical n- s-" or "TNS."

"If what's alleged is true," said Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman, "the commissioner takes comments like that very, very seriously, and he's going to take appropriate action. We can't tolerate that."

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Program for young victims of violence shutting down

2009-03-31T11:55:00.002-04:00

By Kia Gregory
Inquirer Staff Writer

Outside his home in West Philadelphia, 17-year-old Michael Kennedy cautiously exits a cab. A crutch under his right arm, he steps carefully with his left leg, shattered last summer by errant gunfire.

Waiting for him on the sidewalk is his caseworker, Tinisha Scott, part of a gun-violence intervention program that begins in the hospital.

She's there to get an update on Kennedy's physical therapy, his readmittance into school, his plans for college, and to chip away at the fear Kennedy feels every time he leaves his house.

But this program, which tries to prevent gunshot victims ages 15 to 24 from being struck by violence again, is coming to an end.

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Traveling salesmen hailed as heroes in Center City

2009-03-20T08:07:00.001-04:00

By Kia Gregory
Inquirer Staff Writer

Eric Oliver Howard was standing in Center City's James Brown hair salon yesterday afternoon, telling the manager about his company's blow dryers, flat irons, and curling irons, "the iPods" of the industry, when outside they heard a woman scream.

The men turned to the window and saw a guy running down Pine Street near 11th, a tan purse tucked under his arm.

He was wearing a bright-green hoodie, white sweatpants, and white sneakers. His screaming victim stood frozen a few doors away.

"What should we do?" Howard, 43, of FHI Heat, asked his associate Skip Callahan, a sales rep for Tru Beauty.

"Get him," Callahan offered.

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Teens train, but will enough pools open? Would-be lifeguards plunge into iffy future

2009-03-06T19:45:00.002-05:00

By Kia Gregory
Inquirer Staff Writer

Although the city is lagging in its goal to reopen more outdoor pools this summer, on Wednesday evening, in the clear blue water of the pool at Northeast's Lincoln High School, Tom Finn, 15, swam and panted in hopes of becoming a city lifeguard.

In the Recreation Department's lifeguard screening course for summer job candidates, Finn was one of 10 who had to swim 300 meters, half freestyle and half breaststroke. Without a break.

Then, in 1 minute, 40 seconds, he had to swim 20 meters, dive 12 feet to the bottom of the indoor pool without goggles, and bring up a 10-pound brick. While holding the brick in both hands, he had to swim another 20 meters.

At the end of the hour-long session, Finn, of Mayfair, and six others had passed. They can move on to the Red Cross Certification Class in two weeks - one step closer to a possible job. But that depends on how successfully the city raises money to keep pools open.

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(Photo credit: John Costello, Philadelphia Inquirer)

Tearful apology in beating death

2009-03-05T19:58:00.001-05:00

By Kia Gregory
Inquirer Staff Writer

At her sentencing yesterday in Common Pleas Court, Echo Ward turned to the victim's parents and wept.

"I don't know what to tell you," Ward, 25, said to Peg and Tom Bradly, who were also in tears. "I'm sorry."

In January, Ward pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated assault in the beating death of the Bradlys' 28-year-old son, Tim, who was killed in 2007 on the rooftop of an abandoned building in West Philadelphia known to squatters as Paradise City.

"It will never be enough," Ward said in her apology. "I can't change my mistakes. And I didn't realize them until it was too late. I'm sorry."

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Man sentenced in modern-hobo death

2009-02-28T19:39:00.001-05:00

By Kia Gregory
Inquirer Staff Writer

Standing in Common Pleas Court yesterday, waiting for the sentencing of the man who had pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the beating death of her son, Peg Bradly had a change of heart.

She wanted to give her victim-impact statement.

Bradly stood, motioned for the defendant's mother to join her, and stared down the defendant, Conor McCarthy.

"I want you to look at me and your mother," Bradly said, tears starting to fall.

Look at the hurt and pain you have caused. I will have an emptiness for the rest of my life, but you have sentenced your mother to something far worse. My worries are over," she said, "but hers have just begun. Shame on you. Shame on you."

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A mother remembers her slain son

2009-02-12T12:00:00.000-05:00

Her son would be 14, and on quiet days, when her younger children are at school, Patricia Arnold sits and imagines her son as a high schooler, discovering his independence, but still “sweet and kind,” tagging behind his older brother Cardeen, teasing his sisters, helping around the house, doting on Arnold, pleading “Mommy, gimme a kiss.”

Across from the brown sofa, a large portrait of Faheem peers down from the wall. It was drawn by an inmate in state prison, where Arnold once spoke about how violence stole her son.

One bitter cold February morning, five years ago, as Faheem Thomas Childs walked to school in his North Philadelphia neighborhood, two groups of men, feuding for days, pulled out guns and fired more than 40 shots at each other.

A crossing guard was struck in the foot. At the schoolyard gate, Faheem was struck in the head, above his right eye. The third grader fell to the ground, onto his backpack. A police officer rushed him to the hospital. He died three days later.

A mother grieved, and a city was outraged.

Five years later, Arnold’s tears come easily, along with anger. She’s pained with the thought that her son, known in the family as Poppy, with his brown face, tight cornrows and warm, almond eyes, who became a national poster child for the city’s raging gun violence, has been long forgotten.

“What are we going to do to keep the change going? What are we going to do to keep these streets safe for our children? Everybody was around that day, where are you today?

“In this neighborhood, I can say they tried,” she continues. “But it is a change that went on?” She pauses. “No.”

Arnold, 37, says she remembers that morning - February 11, 2004 - like it was yesterday.

Faheem didn’t want to go to school. He said his stomach hurt, she remembers, but soon enough he was feeling better.

“Are you sure you wanna to go?,” she asked.“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Arnold gave him her usual run down: “Go straight to school. Watch out for cars. Don’t talk to strangers. And if somebody’s shooting, duck.”

“Mommy, gimme a kiss,” Faheem said, then ran out the door. He left without his two sisters. He didn’t want to be late.

Today, when Arnold walks three of her children to Faheem’s old elementary school, she takes the long route, careful to avoid the path he walked that day.

Outside the school, she notices the mural that includes his likeness has faded.

“My brother got hurt over there didn’t he mom,” her son Rasheen, 7, often asks. Arnold just nods, eyeing a police officer standing in the school yard.

Two men accused in Faheem's death, Kennell Spady and Kareem Johnson, were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Police believe at least three other men were involved, but no additional arrests have been made. No one is takling.

The parent patrols have dissipated. The school has a new principal. Faheem’s old classmates have long graduated.

“Every time I walk in that school I get a cold breeze,” Arnold says. “I don’t see no memory of my son.”

“They should have something in there saying ‘In Memory Of Faheem’ or ‘Stop The Violence,’ something ... It could have been 10 or 15 more kids just stretched out on the pavement.”

Arnold, a stay-at-home mom, has eight children, including one step son; the oldest 21, the youngest 6-year-old. And she has seven grandchildren. Shortly before Faheem was killed, the Philadelphia Housing Authority moved Arnold, who once lived in a homeless shelter, to a three-story row house in North Philadelphia to accomodate her growing family.

Faheem’s father lives up the street.

The family is close knit, closer now, she says. The older ones have graduated high school and have decent jobs. And on special occasions they all fill the house with banter, singing and good food. But “I know they hurt,” she says. “I know they do.”

Outside of her house, on the red brick, in black marker reads: Faheem Thomas Childs RIP. Her younger boys keep the ink fresh. Two of her daughters have memorialized Faheem with tattoos. The younger ones usually wear something of his - a jacket, a shirt - with pride.

Her son Cardeen, 19, is quiet, too quiet, and idles around the house, afraid to go outside, while her teenaged daughter Cashay often misses her curfew. “I don’t know what’s in her mind,” Arnold says. “She won’t let me in.”

Cashay braided Faheem’s hair the night before he was shot. When they do talk about him, she just cries and cries, says Arnold, asking why.“I don’t know why,” she replies. “Things happen. That’s why I’m trying not to let things happen to you.”

A few years ago, she told a failing Cardeen: “You can’t blame your brother’s death on messing up in school. You have to do what you have to do in school so you can succeed in life. He don’t want y’all to stop here.”

But in many ways, Arnold remains frozen.

“I don’t go out. I can’t trust nobody. I don’t do nothing, but sit and cry,” she says, tears flowing from her eyes. “I miss my baby.”

At night, Arnold often just stares out her bedroom window. She can’t sleep. She sometimes hears a creek on the stairs, and “I know it’s Faheem,” she says.

Some nights she hears gunshots.

“The neighorhood is the neighorhood,” she says. “We mind our business. We go on with our life. I just pray to God nothing else happens to my children.”

After Faheem was shot, there were prayer vigils, rallies, meetings, promises and vows. Now Arnold says many of those who united with her in her tragedy have disappeared. She doesn’t say it bitterly, just as a matter of fact.

Then she says her manager painted the front of her house, fixed her screen door, and hung an address plate, she believes for the media. Now she waits for minor repairs to her worn house.

Thousands attended Faheem’s funeral, which Arnold calls as “ridiculous,” adding how churches “were bidding on my son’s funeral,” she believes to increase their membership and gain publicity.

“I wanted it to be private,” she says of the services. “This is something that’s hurting me. It’s not a show. I just wish it never happened.”

Weeks later, thousands more marched walked through her battered neighborhood in a “Save The Children” march, calling for an end to violence. It ended with a rally outside Faheem’s elementary school. Arnold remembers walking off the makeshift stage in tears, disgusted by cheers of “We did it! We did it.”

“Did what?,” she remembers thinking.

Faheem was one of more than a dozen schoolchildren murdered that school year, on pace to be one of the district's deadliest years in a decade.

“The march was to try and change things, stop the violence,” Arnold says. “When Poppy got killed it was kids getting shot. Then it was the guys getting shot, drug shots. Now every time you turn around a cop is getting shot. It’s always something,” Arnold says. “It can never be peace.”

At her kitchen table, Arnold pulls out a box, and shifts through the stacks of letters and sympathy cards.“People gave from their heart and I felt every bit of it,” she says, holding up a Valentine from one of Faheem’s classmates.

She then pulls out a flyer from a benefit held in her son’s name, which she says she didn’t even know about. The ticket prices were $100. She wonders to what end.

During that time, an anonymous donor called the funeral home to donated a tombstone. When Arnold called several months after Faheem was buried, the offer was gone.

At Mount Peace cemetery at 31st and Lehigh, a metal pole stands in a patch of dirt. On the front, Faheem Thomas Childs is typed on a laminated index card, yellowed and worn.

“My son doesn’t even have a tombstone,” Arnold says, tears rolling down her face.”

This year, like every year since, Arnold and her family visit Faheem’s grave. There they place flowers and candles.

"I don’t want to forget him,” Arnold says, tears flowing. “I’ll never forget him. I miss my baby. I miss him.”

The family also lights candles in front of his school by the gate where he was shot down, where thousands of people once marched.

“We should keep the change going. Keep trying to make the schools safe. Keep trying to make the streets safe. We can do it again. It just doesn’t have to stop from February 11, 2004. It can keep going.”

A platform for local talent

2009-02-08T20:55:00.003-05:00

It's the lunchtime rush at Center City's Suburban Station, and over the squawk of announcements and the hiss of trains, Anthony Riley, with his head cocked back, snaps his fingers and sways in a two-step as he soulfully sings to a captive audience:

The best things in life are free
But you can save them for the birds and bees.
I want money. That's what I want.

Riley, 22, is in his element, standing in the spotlight of the underground busking world, performing the 1960s hit "Money" a cappella at the coveted pillar between Faber's newsstand, Dunkin' Donuts, and staircases leading to and from the tracks.

From the stream of passersby, a half-dozen stop to listen.

Keep reading... and watch busker videos.

Journalist looks online for help in finding who hit him

2009-02-03T06:20:00.014-05:00

The introduction to Brian Hickey's new Web page reads:

"On Nov. 28, I was nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking to catch the train home. More than two months later, there's scant information coming from the public, and the person has yet to fess up. It's time for that to change."

Desperate for tips in the accident that left him for dead, the former Philadelphia City Paper managing editor, who often chronicled the city's violent crime, started a Facebook page yesterday morning titled "Help Me Find the Person Who Almost Killed Me."

Click here to read more.

Bridesburg sinkhole swallows two vehicles

2009-01-31T13:43:00.009-05:00

"It felt like an earthquake," said Corine Williams, sitting yesterday on her front steps wrapped in an Eagles blanket, staring at the giant sinkhole in front of her Bridesburg home.

When Williams came to her door about 10 Thursday night to look for the source of the clamor, she saw a Water Department truck stuck inside the sinkhole, along with a parked car. The truck was responding to reports of water problems when it sank while backing up, taking the parked car along for the ride.

Click here to read more.

Historic pilgrimage from Philly to D.C.

2009-01-21T12:50:00.005-05:00

All is dark outside as the chartered bus rolls out of the parking lot of the Acme Market in Mount Airy.

It is just after 2 a.m. More than 50 people are on board, mostly African Americans, all intent on witnessing history.

Organized by Northwest Philly for Change, a political group, they are campaign workers, community leaders, business owners, high schoolers, mothers and grandmothers, fathers and sons. Theirs is a pilgrimage to Washington.

Click here to read more.

A spirit wandering, then a life lost

2009-01-11T19:55:00.002-05:00

On Father's Day 2007, Tim Bradly called his dad in West Deptford to cancel their plans for an afternoon's walk around Penn's Landing, maybe dinner.

Some friends were visiting, Tim said.

"Are you sure?" his father asked, unable to hide his disappointment and worry.
For a decade his son, once a star athlete, witty and playful, had plummeted into the darkest quarters of a modern hobo culture, where he hopped trains, squatted in abandoned houses, abused drugs, and begged for money.

In recent months, though, Tim had seemed to be reemerging, planning his future.

Even happy.

"I'm all right, Dad. It's cool," the 28-year-old said, and promised to call later. "Tell Mom I love her."

Tim also phoned his best friend, Crystal Bonner, who traveled with him under his maxim, "Live free." Tim begged her to hang out with him and his friends. Feeling ill, she said no.

The next day, as the sun rose over the shuttered Croydon apartments on 49th Street near Locust in West Philadelphia, police found Tim's body on the roof of the rambling eight-story building, which squatters called "Paradise City."

He had been bludgeoned, his face smashed in.

Click here to read more.

Iraqi veteran held for trial in movie theater shooting

2009-01-01T14:52:00.001-05:00

On Christmas evening, Woffard Lomax Jr. was in a theater with his girlfriend and her three teenagers, laughing as they enjoyed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Then came the shush.
"Be quiet," said a man sitting in front.

"We can't laugh?" asked Lomax, 31.

More words were exchanged. A second man pelted Lomax and one of the teens with popcorn. People stood and a brawl ensued.

Lomax, recounting the exchange in court yesterday, said he was fighting with the man who told him to quiet down. Then the one who threw the popcorn pulled out a gun and fired, striking him in the left arm, he said.

Click here to read more.