Jury Selection Begins in Suit Over 1985 MOVE Bombing
Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of a federal civil rights suit over the police siege of a radical group that led to the fiery deaths of 11 people and leveled a neighborhood nearly 11 years ago.
On May 13, 1985, hundreds of police officers laid siege to the MOVE group’s fortified house in West Philadelphia. Under a hastily crafted plan approved by then-Mayor Wilson Goode’s chief aide, a percussion bomb was dropped on the house.
The bomb started a fire, which authorities allowed to burn in a bid to force the occupants out. The fire killed 11 people, including five children, and gutted the neighborhood.
The siege came after the back-to-nature MOVE group refused to obey city laws. Police were attempting to serve warrants for disorderly conduct offenses.
Neither a federal nor a state grand jury found any city official criminally liable. But Ramona Africa, the only adult to survive the siege, and several family members of the 11 victims are trying to establish civil liability, suing the city and ranking police and fire officers at the time.
Goode and his aide, Leo Brooks, were ruled to be exempt from the lawsuit. The jury picked for the case must weigh the liability of then-Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor and Fire Commissioner William Richmond.
Sambor approved dropping the bomb, and he and Richmond conferred at the scene after the bomb started the blaze on the row house roof.
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