At least two known dead and two injured after the Philly Inn blew up and burned early Thursday morning By Jim Striegelvich Bulletin Staff Writer Photographs by Jack Weinberg Bulletin Photographer Posted Online 09/09 at 8:45 a.m.

Philadelphia-A violent explosion at the Philly Inn on Frankford Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia blew out at least one motel room this morning just before two o?clock.

The cause of the blast, and subsequent fire, said a spokesman for the Philadelphia Police Department, has yet to be positively determined. Initial reports, however, suggest that an illegal ad hoc laboratory for the manufacture of crystal methamphetamine was involved.

The fire displaced more than 150 people who were staying at the motel, including a twenty-five-year-old who identified himself as Demetrius Xavier “X-J” Johnson.

“It?s gotta be meth, man,” said Johnson. “This place has stunk of cat piss for months! And ain?t nobody done nothing about it.”

The police spokesman said that two men, as yet to be identified, have been confirmed as dead in the motel room. Two others were injured and transported by ambulance to Temple Burn Center; no details on them or their condition have been made available at this time.

Check back for updates as they become available.

COMMENTS (3)

From Independent1inPhilly (9:01 a.m.):

Those druggie slimeballs. Can?t think of a better way for them to depart this world.

Recommend [6] Click Here to Report Abuse From WhatWouldBenFranklinDo (9:22 a.m.):

I?m with you, Indy1. Too bad they ruin so many lives first, however.

Recommend [4] Click Here to Report Abuse From Hung.Up.Badge.But.Not.Gun (9:50 a.m.):

Amen to both of you, Indy1 amp; WWBFD. I spent enough time walking the beat to see everything at least once. And nothing is as insidious as what these drugs do to families of every walk of life. I say, Shoot?em all and let the Good Lord sort?em out.

Recommend [4] Click Here to Report Abuse Delgado shook his head.

Fuck you people!

I’m not forcing anyone to buy and swallow anything they don’t want.

They want it bad.

Hell, even the kids.

And look at those ads-booze, gambling, hookers.

Everyone’s got a habit.

What the hell’s the difference with drugs?

He clicked on the part of the page to leave a comment, then pounded out the message on the keyboard and clicked the SEND button.

After a moment, his message appeared onscreen, last on the comment list:

From Death.Before.Dishonor (9:52 a.m.):

F**k you pendejos! Dudes sell drugs because people (are you paying attention?) because people want to buy them! Look at the ads on this page-booze, gambling (and where there?s gambling there?s hookers)… Something for everyone. What?s the difference with drugs? And you know what? Sometimes we even clean up the rats from the gutters-like those in this motel!

Recommend [0] Click Here to Report Abuse

V

[ONE] Temple Burn Center Temple University Hospital North Broad and West Tioga Streets, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 10:10 A.M.

The third-floor Intensive Care Unit was ringed by a corridor that went around the entire floor by the exterior windows. Chad Nesbitt stood leaning against the northwest corner window, which looked out onto Broad and Tioga and, across the street, the Shriners Children’s Hospital. The two medical facilities were connected by an enclosed sky bridge.

Inside, Nesbitt had a view down the north and west corridors. Near the ends of each were pairs of swinging doors that led into the Intensive Care Unit sterile areas. The ICU room at the end of the corridor to Nesbitt’s left was where the doctors had put the burn victim initially admitted as “John Doe.” Sitting in a chrome-framed plastic chair across from it was Skipper Olde’s father.

Joseph Warren Olde, Sr., had his head in his hands and was staring at the highly polished tile floor, seemingly frozen. He was tall and lanky, with thin, patrician features.

Nesbitt knew that he was a graduate of Harvard, and even now he had on the school’s unofficial uniform. He wore it damn near every day-a Brooks Brothers two-piece striped woolen suit (summer weight now, the cuff of the pants barely covering his ankles) with blood-and-blue rep necktie, white button-down shirt, and Alden black leather shoes.

It’s on twenty-four/seven, Chad thought.

I’ve even seen him in it in Florida. He looked like Richard Nixon walking down the beach. Ridiculous.

It’s like he hides behind that suit.

Skipper said he’d overhead his grandfather once say, “Joey never really excelled at anything, except perhaps being arrogant.”

Sitting in another chrome-framed plastic chair beside him was a blue shirt Philadelphia Police Department patrol officer.

Police Officer Stephanie Kowenski was twenty-five years old, five-foot-four, and 150 pounds. She more than filled out her uniform, and her bulletproof vest served only to accentuate her bulk. In the molded polymer holster on her right hip she carried a Glock Model 17 nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a fully charged magazine of seventeen rounds and one round in the chamber. Two additional fully charged magazines were on her kit.

Police Officer Kowenski’s orders were to keep watch on the door. She had a police radio on her belt, its coiled cord snaking up to her shoulder mic-the microphone pinned to her right shoulder epaulet. The orders further said to immediately report any news of any kind concerning J. Warren Olde, Jr. She was reading for the third time a People magazine she’d taken from the dog-eared stack on the coffee table next to her chair, and was attempting not to notice the anguished father of the victim.

At the end of the corridor to the right was the ICU room in which they’d put Becca Benjamin. There, a male version of Police Officer Kowenski-short, squat, bored, but reading a paperback novel-guarded the door.

Pacing in front of the swinging doors was Mr. James Henry Benjamin. The fifty-year-old president and chief executive officer of Benjamin Securities, who was five-eleven and 160 with a striking resemblance to the actor Pierce Bros nan, kept shaking his head and muttering, “I don’t understand this. I just don’t understand…”

His wife, Andrea, who also was fifty and a very attractive older version of her daughter Becca, sat in one of three chrome-framed plastic chairs against the wall of windows. She held a cellular phone in one hand, a white linen handkerchief in the other. After every third or fourth pass of her husband, she tried to calm him, and added, “Honey, please sit down.”

Nesbitt pulled out his phone and hit the key that speed-dialed Matt Payne’s mobile. It rang only once before he heard Payne’s voice.

“Hey, Chad. What’s up? Where’re you?”

“At Temple. The Burn Center? I felt it best to be here…”

His voice trailed off.

Matt Payne knew the hospital. And he knew why Becca and Skipper had been taken there, and not to Nazareth Hospital, even though it was only blocks away from the Philly Inn.

Tony Harris had explained to him that the “Where do we take ’em?” decision for the medics on the scene had been a no-brainer.

“The medics followed the trauma triage protocol,” Harris had told Payne. “The first thing, they measured for vital signs and level of consciousness. Then came other immediate steps, including establishing an airway, immobilizing the spine, beginning a high flow of oh-two-maintaining an oxygen saturation of at least eighty or ninety percent-controlling the hemorrhaging, attempting to determine the level of injury. Then there’s a long list of criteria that, if a patient meets any one of them and certainly more than one, the medics contact the Level One Trauma Center. And because both of these victims were pretty fucked up, and ‘trauma with burns’ is one criterion, it was a simple call. Temple has (a) the only Level One Trauma Center, and (b) it has the Burn Center.”