Family of slain abductee gets $1.8 million settlement

The City of Camden has settled a lawsuit filed by the family of a commuter who was abducted from the Ferry Avenue PATCO station and killed in 2001.

City Council approved the $1.8 million settlement for the family of Christine Eberle last night. The agreement was reached last month, shortly before trial was scheduled to start in Superior Court.

Eberle, 27, of Washington Township, was abducted by two men on her way home from her Center City job as a financial manager.

The men pushed her into her Honda hatchback in the PATCO station parking lot and drove off. Eberle's body was found the next day in the woods behind the Malandra Hall Community Center in Camden.

The two men, Ryshaone Thomas and Marcus Toliver, both of Camden, pleaded guilty in 2005. Both received a 43-year sentence.

A commuter who witnessed the abduction called 911 and was transferred to a Camden dispatcher, who characterized the incident as a domestic dispute and did not send police.

Lawyers for the Eberle family said that they were ready to prove that, if the dispatcher had sent police, the abduction could have been thwarted.

At the time of the abduction, there was one police cruiser a block away and another six blocks away, said attorney Andrew Rossetti.

"We would have convinced the jury that there would never have been a murder if there had been lights and sirens, and the car a block away had been dispatched," he said.