Staff writer Mensah M. Dean joined the enterprise team in January 2016. Since 1997, he has worked for the Daily News, covering a number of beats including, education, welfare reform, criminal courts and City Hall. He began his career at the Washington Times, where he won a handful of regional journalism awards.
They were calling him “Spider-man,” and he was the talk of the Westpark Apartments in Powelton on Friday, a day after he scaled 15 floors of fence-enclosed balconies to alert his bedridden mother to a fire in the 19-story building.
Philadelphia Police said Friday that street justice should not be tolerated, after they said a 54-year-old man who stole a car with three children inside was fatally beaten by the father and a group of neighborhood men Thursday night in Strawberry Mansion.
The son of Philadelphia’s sheriff remained hospitalized Monday recovering from gunshot wounds he received during a sidewalk attack Friday that killed a man renovating a North Philly house.
Isiaka Meite, the Southwest Philly man killed during a graduation cookout last Sunday, is remembered as a good son and brother who had dreams of being a filmmaker.
The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office on Monday confirmed what many suspected: Dante M. Austin, the city’s first openly gay deputy sheriff, whose body was found Friday morning, died by suicide. Funeral arrangements also were announced.
Philadelphia's annual Pride Parade drew thousands to Center City. On the minds of many was Dante Austin, whose death last week shocked many in the gay community.
Austin, 27, a U.S. Army veteran who was working in the Civil Enforcement Unit, was scheduled to be promoted to sergeant in the Sheriff’s Office on July 1, Sheriff Jewell Williams said.
