The Nation - News from May 16, 1986

A judge granted the Philadelphia district attorney’s request for a grand jury investigation into whether city officials and others committed crimes in the MOVE battle that left 11 dead and 61 homes destroyed. Police during the May 13, 1985, siege dropped a bomb on MOVE’s fortified west Philadelphia row house, touching off a fire that destroyed 1 1/2 blocks. Six adults and five children died in the MOVE house, and 276 people were left homeless when their houses burned down. The police officer who assembled the bomb and the one who dropped it refused to testify before the city’s MOVE investigating commission, citing their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.