West Oak Lane, PA: Shows up to help, is shot dead by cops

DANIELLE CRAWLEY'S family desperately wanted her to leave her boyfriend's house to get away from what they say is a history of domestic violence.

Yesterday, after the latest alleged beating, her mother, Rose, drove to the house in her school district bus and had Danielle load up her belongings.

Rose Crawley also called her son, Eric, 38, a SEPTA bus driver and father of four, to come to the house on Rugby Street near Phil Ellena in the city's Stenton section.

He sped over in his white Cadillac with a gun that he legally owned and that he normally carried on his hip. Moments after he arrived, he was shot dead by a Philadelphia police officer.

Family members and friends charged that Crawley had been unjustly shot and killed, but police yesterday contended that he had raised his gun despite an officer's command to keep it holstered.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, who visited the shooting scene, said a 14th District police officer had told Crawley "to put his hand on the car, but instead he" pulled out the gun. The gun was found near the left-front wheel of the Cadillac, Ramsey said.

Crawley's mother and sister hovered near his body, screaming, neighbors said.

"'You didn't have to shoot him!' " neighbor Gladys Worthy, 82, said Danielle had screamed as Rose wailed, " 'That's my son!' "

Lt. Raymond Evers, a police spokesman, said police were first called to the house at 10:05 a.m. because of a domestic disturbance between the sister and her boyfriend. Two officers, a man and a woman, responded to the call and the "disturbance was taken care of" before the Cadillac pulled up, Evers said.

The male officer, whom police did not identify, believed that Crawley was raising the gun toward him, so he shot Crawley once in the chest, Evers said. Crawley was pronounced dead at 10:32 a.m. at Albert Einstein Medical Center.

Dynita Crawley, 39, who is married to Eric's older brother, Darryle, a SEPTA supervisor, gave a different account of the shooting based on what she heard from Rose, who witnessed the shooting.

"My mother-in-law said nobody asked him" to do anything with his gun, Dynita said. "His weapon was not drawn."

Eric's "hand was never near his gun," Dynita said Rose had told her.

Eric Crawley had gotten his gun for protection when he previously owned a barbershop in Roxborough, Dynita said.