Boy, 15, arrested in fatal hit-and-run

Marjorie Moore stores the ashes of her dead husband in a box near her bed, where it's just an arm's length away.

Every morning and night, she whispers a prayer for him, each word reminding her that her "Pop" is gone and of her hopes that the person responsible for his death will be caught, she said.

It took nearly five weeks, but yesterday her prayers were answered.

Police arrested a 15-year-old boy who they say was behind the wheel of his parents' Ford Expedition on Christmas Eve when he plowed it into 73-year-old William Wrigley, killing him, and then kept driving. Police said that he turned himself in yesterday after an arrest warrant was issued more than a week ago.

"I feel good," said Moore, 73. "I hope he gets put away."

Authorities have not released the identity of the teen suspect, pending whether he's charged as an adult when he appears in a court hearing today, a police source said.

"I'm not holding a grudge against this young man, but he made a mistake and he destroyed two families, including his own," said Moore's daughter-in-law, Karen Moore, a former Philly cop.

"If he gets tried as an adult, he might learn a lesson."

About 9:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Wrigley, of Frankford Avenue near Sedgely, was crossing the intersection on M Street near Erie Avenue going toward Pat's Pub, his regular watering hole, police said. As he walked with the assistance of a cane, the underage driver struck him and continued on, police said.

Wrigley died of his injuries a short time later.

Friends outside of the bar who heard the collision ran to investigate, and found Wrigley lying face down in a pool of blood, his cane and one tattered shoe lying several feet away, said Wrigley's longtime friend Tom Salmons, 47.

He recalled a friend turning over Wrigley, who wasn't breathing, and tried to revive him with CPR.

"But it caved in like nothing was there," Salmons said.

"It was heartless. What's he [the teen] doing driving?" he asked. "Knowing that he left the scene, I've been enraged. It was ruthless."

Moore, who was not with her common-law husband of 27 years that night, said that she tries to think only of their good times together.

"He was a nice person," she said. "He ate anything. He was in a string band, all kinds of string bands. He played the saxophone. When we went to the bar, he played the tambourine.

"We'd go out and hear music, go out for a walk and be with our friends. Take the El, go up to the 'Ave' and go for a walk or go down to Penn's Landing."

But all that has changed, she said.

"He can now rest in peace," she said. *