• 
• 
  • Arts & Culture
  • City Hall
  • Environment
  • Housing & Displacement
  • Immigrant Rights
  • LGBQT
  • Poverty
  • Youth & Schools
• 
  • Features
  • News Briefs
  • Newswire
  • Headlines
• 
  • Mailing Lists
  • PhillyIMC's Wiki
  • LAVA
  • Contact us
• 
• 
• 
• 

The Port Richmond home of Police Officer Frank Tepper sat vacant yesterday. The lace curtains were drawn tight, and a sleeve of plastic-wrapped circulars advertising Black Friday "door busters" sat untouched on the front stoop.

Neighbors said the officer, whom many of them have come to demonize, fled his home under the cover of darkness and with police escort about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. The off-duty cop fatally shot William "Billy" Panas Jr., 21, during a Saturday night brawl outside Tepper's home. Panas was unarmed. The incident involved some of Tepper's family members, police confirmed.

Though Tepper's house is now empty, a round-the-clock police detail has been posted outside. Yesterday afternoon, two officers, wearing bulletproof vests, kept vigil in an idling squad car parked on the sidewalk in front of Tepper's house on Elkhart Street, near Edgemont.

"We're just guarding it in case something goes wrong," explained one officer.

"I think police are guarding the house so nobody throws a brick through the window," neighbor Catherine Naulty, 68, speculated. "I heard that threats were made. I don't think anybody would do anything, but you never know."

Meanwhile, Panas' family endured the blackest of Black Fridays. About 4 p.m., his parents, William and Karen, emerged from Reilly's Funeral Home, on Allegheny Avenue near Thompson Street, after viewing their son's body for the first time. Karen, encircled by relatives, pressed a tissue to her face and sobbed.

"It was probably the worst hour that they've ever spent in their life," said Panas' uncle, John Panas. "They're devastated. They actually fell to their knees."

Panas, a 2005 high school graduate of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was laid out in a tan suit that he had worn only once - to his senior prom, relatives said.

Police have said that at about 11 p.m. last Saturday, Tepper was trying to break up a street brawl when someone in the fight attacked him, leading him to shoot Panas. But angry neighbors have said that the fight had spilled out from a party at Tepper's house. Several witnesses also claim that Tepper was visibly intoxicated at the time.

Tepper, 43, who has been on the force 16 years, was placed on desk duty after the shooting. The police Internal Affairs Bureau and District Attorney's Office are investigating. Tepper, through a relative, has declined comment. He was assigned to the force's Civil Affairs Unit, which is responsible for keeping the peace at public demonstrations and pickets.

Yesterday, neighbors, friends and relatives of Panas, who lived at home with his parents a few blocks from where he was killed, speculated about why Tepper vacated his house:

_ Perhaps he could no longer stomach the growing memorial to Panas just outside his doorstep on the slim, alley-like Elkhart Street. If Tepper looked out any front window of his three-story house, he'd see a bedsheet, duct-taped to a rusted playground fence and reading "R.I.P. William R. Panas Jr." in giant black letters.

_ Perhaps Tepper didn't want to be home when the Panas family had their Thanksgiving dinner, complete with dining tables and chairs, at the spot where he shot Panas once in the chest.

_ Perhaps Tepper feared that a neighborhood drumbeat of calls for his badge and his jailing would end in violence.

"So many people want to beat him up," said Alisha Herrmann, 15, as she sat on a folding chair inside the memorial, a makeshift hut of wooden planks and blue plastic tarp. Panas' uneaten Thanksgiving dinner sat on the ground at Herrmann's feet. On a paper plate covered with plastic wrap, there was turkey, corn, green beans, potatoes and cookies.

"The whole city is angry," said Panas' aunt Dorothy Solenski, 51, as she stood shivering and crying under the tarp, which snapped in the bitter wind.

On Thanksgiving, John Panas and his wife, Bernice, set up a feast at the memorial site. About 150 friends and relatives gathered.

"We were not going to let [his parents] be deprived of having Thanksgiving dinner with their son," John Panas said.

There was plenty of turkey and trimmings, but Panas' loved ones had trouble eating.

"I'm a big eater. I had very little," John Panas said. "It's been a rough week. It's going to be a rough tomorrow."

John Panas, 50, however, said he was grateful for the support of Port Richmond residents.

A viewing for William "Billy" Panas Jr. was scheduled for today, from 8 to 10 a.m., at Nativity BVM Church on Allegheny Avenue, near Belgrade, followed by services.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20091128_Off-duty_cop_who_shot_21-year-old_during_brawl_flees_home.html