PHILADELPHIA — After nearly four decades, Philadelphia has acknowledged that it was no accident when six adults and five children died in the MOVE bombing.
The Medical Examiner’s Office classified as “accidental” the deaths resulting from the city’s 1985 bombing of a West Philadelphia neighborhood where MOVE, a Black liberation group, had squared off with police repeatedly.
The decision to amend the death certificates followed an independent investigation released this summer into how victims’ remains from the MOVE bombing languished in a cardboard box on a basement shelf at the Medical Examiner’s Office until 2021. The negligence led to widespread outrage and resignations. Reclassifying the deaths as homicides was among the recommendations in a 257-page report released in June that traced the office’s failures.
