Phila. police find woman wedged between walls at school

Police said yesterday they were surprised to find a young woman stuck between the exterior walls of a Catholic school in Kensington and an adjacent trailer Saturday night after nuns reported hearing her screams.

The 20-year-old Bucks County woman apparently fell from the roof of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Kensington around 9 p.m. and became wedged, upright, between the walls. The trailer is used for extra classroom space.

"I've never seen that before," Sgt. Shawn Gushue said, declining to identify the woman. He said it took firefighters about an hour to free the woman, using the Jaws of Life to slice through a trailer wall. He said the woman had fallen nearly 12 feet, almost to the ground.

Why she was on the roof is "the 64 million-dollar question," according to a priest at the church. He said she was not a parishioner.

Gushue said the school, on Potter Street near B Street, had been burglarized in the last month, but there was no new evidence of forcible entry or stolen items. He said that when the woman was taken to Episcopal Hospital for treatment of cuts and bruises, she told authorities she had been raped. Gushue said the investigation continues.