Carjacking, Wawa shutdown highlight Relays weekend crime

A rowdy crowd forced the Wawa convenience store at 38th and Spruce streets to close early Sunday morning, and a man was carjacked Saturday afternoon outside Franklin Field, highlighting a Penn Relays weekend that saw a slight jump from last year in the number of serious crimes. One aggravated assault, five robberies and 19 thefts -- including eight at Franklin Field -- were reported to University Police from Thursday through Sunday morning, compared with one simple assault, three robberies and 19 thefts last year, according to the police crime log book. Wawa assistant store manager Frank Ponzio explained that approximately 60 people threw glass bottles, cans and food across the store, prompting to shut down the "completely packed" store for the first time since last Christmas. The shop remained closed from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. "Next year, we'll probably close at two o'clock," Ponzio said, noting that unruly crowds -- which he claims consisted largely of individuals who were not University students -- have forced management to close the store nearly every year during the Relays weekend. Despite the fact that "12 or 13" employees were working at the time, he said "no matter how many employees we had here, we couldn't prevent" the chaos. Ponzio noted that Wawa regularly stops selling alcohol at midnight, so the crowd did not necessarily riot in order to purchase beer. "They rioted because they were all having fun," he said. In Saturday's carjacking incident -- which occurred outside Franklin Field on the 3200 block of South Street -- two or three men jumped out of a beige Saab and beat a man with baseball bats, forcing him out of his 1995 Ford Mustang, University Police Detective John Peterson said. The carjackers left the man on the street and drove away in the Mustang, while two other passengers drove off in the Saab, Peterson said. A Philadelphia Fire Department rescue vehicle transported the man to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was admitted in stable condition with injuries to the head and face, Peterson said. In two other incidents late Saturday night which were unrelated to the carjacking but probably related to each other, two men robbed two out-of-state residents at gunpoint on the 3900 block of Pine Street, then robbed five students at gunpoint on the 3800 block of Sansom Street, according to Peterson. The robbers took $45 in cash from the couple in the first incident and a total of $35 in cash from the group of students. Both incidents occurred shortly after midnight Sunday, Peterson said. And both sets of robbery victims gave University Police similar descriptions of the suspects. One suspect was described by the students as a 20- to 24-year-old, 5'11" black male, wearing a blue jacket with white shoulders and carrying a handgun, while the other was described as a 20- to 24-year-old, 5'9" black male, wearing dark clothing with his hood pulled over his head. In an unusual incident Saturday at Franklin Field, a woman suffered minor cuts when an unidentified person dropped or threw a pocket knife, striking the woman, Peterson said. Although University Police originally logged the incident as an aggravated assault with a knife, Peterson explained that the incident was probably not serious, since the bottle-opener tool was open and it appeared that the pocket knife slipped out of the owner's hands.

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