Yo, Philly in the News

• Around 2:46PM yesterday afternoon, in the underground SEPTA concourse at 13th and Market streets near the City Hall station, four teens shouted at a 36-year-old Starbucks employee named Sean Patrick Conroy, then surrounded him and attacked him as he crouched defensively. The victim lost consciousness on the concourse and was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:09PM. There appeared to be no prior connection between Conroy and his assailants, and there was no robbery. Police arrested one youth, a 16-year-old student at Simon Gratz High School, and hope to learn the identity of the other youths by questioning him. The Starbucks where the victim worked at the Philadelphia Marriott hotel will be closed temporarily out of respect for his family and co-workers.
• For the first time in more than a decade, SEPTA has a monetary surplus due to a ridership increase, so yesterday the company unveiled a $1.08 billion operating-budget proposal for next fiscal year that actually includes service increases instead of cuts.
• "The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation yesterday announced that it would replace the damaged steel-reinforced-concrete column beneath I-95 in Port Richmond that last week crippled the freeway. Construction is to begin this afternoon, and the job will take about six weeks."
• Yesterday the city's police union announced that its board of directors had voted to endorse electricians' union leader John J. Dougherty in next month's primary race for the State Senate's First District. In other endorsement news—or rather, non-endorsement news—many Philadelphia ward leaders don't plan to formally back the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama for fear of further splintering the city's Democratic Party.
• "Two City Council members are calling for a freeze on sheriff's sales of foreclosed properties so banks can work harder to help homeowners keep their homes."
• Another politician is involved in a prostitution sex scandal! 49-year-old mother of three Theresa Mattison Atkins, wife of the head of Chester County's Department of Emergency Services (Edward J. Atkins, 59), was one of five women taken into custody during a sex sting at a Center City hotel on March 19th. Apparently Atkins went by the name "Rachael Savage" and charged $400 for two hours of companionship.

Image Credit: Flickr user dameetch