Yo, Philly in the News

• A gunman attacked an armored car as it pulled up to service an ATM at a Wachovia Bank in Rhawnhurst early yesterday morning. He killed two guards, injured a third, and escaped with a bag of money. Surveillance cameras recorded the entire attack. The killer "is described as a black man, wearing a yellow baseball cap with a black logo, a black short-sleeved shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers. His car appeared to be a newer-model, four-door black Acura TL with a sunroof." If you have any information, please call 215-686-3334 or -3335. Other stories about this incident can be found here and here.
• Three Philadelphia funeral-home directors were charged yesterday with stealing body parts from the dead without family permission and selling them as part of a $1 billion transplant industry. Much of the tissue was taken from unsuitable donors, but paperwork was falsified to make the donors appear healthy.
• Despite a petition with 600 signatures presented by angry parents at a board meeting on Wednesday, the school board in Reading has still decided not to have the traditional parade of costumed students around the Muhlenberg Elementary Center's school grounds this year. Supposedly this is due to safety concerns since there's construction work going on next to the center, although there was also a letter sent to parents saying that "costumes were becoming increasingly gory and inappropriate, and too expensive for some children" and that the Halloween celebrations were a distraction.
• It's been announced that Bonnie Devlin, vice president for advancement at Lehigh University, resigned from her post on September 30th "to pursue other opportunities," but the fact that her husband was arrested in July for using the Internet to solicit sex from children probably had something to do with it, too.
• The Inquirer has an interesting article about the history of graffiti in Philadelphia, which is also the subject of a movie being screened tonight at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: Cry of the City Part 1: The Legend of Cornbread.
• A tractor trailer was struck yesterday by a SEPTA R2 train on the Bucks-Montgomery county line after the truck driver had apparently driven around a lowered crossing gate. The truck driver and four of the train passengers were injured, the driver most seriously, with some bones broken, but none of the injuries were life threatening.

Image Credit: Flickr user pwbaker