Bomb found on Schuykill near campus

Possible mob link being probed and GREGORY MONTANARO A section of the Schuylkill Expressway near campus was closed for about two hours yesterday after a highway cleaning crew discovered a bomb on the road. When the highway was re-opened shortly before 5 p.m., traffic had backed up for miles and thousands of Philadelphia travelers were stranded in the gridlock – including a number of University students trying to get home for the Jewish holidays. Police would not speculate on why the device was left on the roadway, but officers are looking into the possibility that it may be linked to the ongoing mob war in the Philadelphia area. The bomb was discovered around 1:35 p.m. in the eastbound lane of the expressway near the University Avenue exit – and about 300 feet from reputed mob boss John Stanfa's warehouse in the Grays Ferry section of South Philadelphia, said Lt. Jim McGinty of the Philadelphia Bomb Squad. Despite the bomb's proximity to Stanfa's warehouse on Warfield Street, however, McGinty said it is unlikely that someone had tried or intended to hurl the device at the building. "It would have had to have been thrown, and that would be a heck of a throw," he said. No one was injured by the bomb – which the bomb squad removed from the road and later detonated – but many commuters were inconvenienced by the shutdown of the expressway. The University Avenue overpass of the expressway, which is adjacent to the University's Warren Field, was closed between about 3 and 4:45 p.m., Philadelphia Highway Patrol Officer Robert Grous said. McGinty said the type of bomb found yesterday is particularly dangerous. And , he said, its presence on the busy roadway was a serious hazard. "It's a pretty good device used among the criminal element out there," he said. "They're only made for death and destruction. It was six inches in length, and two and a quarter inches in diameter." "If you would have hit it with a car, that could have caused it to go off," he said. Police said they were investigating whether the bomb had been deliberately planted or whether it had been discarded on the interstate.