- Image from Penn Alexander's Website
"Penn Alexander was the final piece of a long-term Penn undertaking initiated in 1996 by Judith Rodin, then the university's president, after Vladimir Sled, a Russian native and Penn biochemist, was murdered while walking home with his fiancée. The crime shocked the neighborhood, traumatized the campus, and led to a systematic effort that first led to safer, cleaner streets, more home ownership, and the overhaul of hundreds of unsightly and abandoned houses. It's the school, though, that has made the catchment area hot." [more]
- Stephen Seplow, The Inquirer
Below is the Inquirer's November 2, 1996 report of Dr. Vladimir D. Sled's murder on Larchwood:
A HALLOWEEN HOMICIDE JOLTS A REELING PENN
CHEMIST VLADIMIR SLED TRIED TO STOP A PURSE-SNATCHING AND WAS STABBED 5 TIMES.
By: Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. and Nita Lelyveld, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS, Inquirer staff writer Clea Benson contributed to this article.
Halloween was almost over on Larchwood Avenue. Children had trick-or-treated for hours up and down the tree-lined West Philadelphia street, their voices filling the cool evening air. Now they were tucked in bed, the candy put away.
Suddenly the neighbors heard noises. They looked out their windows to see four figures struggling. A man collapsed onto the street. A woman cradled him in her arms, wailing.
The man on the ground was a Russian biochemist, a pillar of his Penn research department, on his way home from the lab with his girlfriend. A few minutes later, he was dead.
All because he tried to stop a purse-snatching.
The killing of Dr. Vladimir D. Sled, 38, a research assistant in biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, jolted a school already reeling from a wave of assaults and the recent shooting of a student near campus.
"All of us . . . are deeply saddened by the tragic death of Vladimir Sled, whose life was taken from us by a despicable and cowardly act," said Penn President Judith Rodin in a statement yesterday. "Dr. Sled had immense talent and a bright, productive future, and we all suffer from this loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family."
Even police were appalled by how quickly a petty crime turned deadly. "A purse snatch turned into murder," said Chief Inspector Vincent DeBlasis.
Police said Sled had been walking home with Cecilia Hagerhall, 32, a colleague and his living companion. They were headed to their apartment in the 4400 block of Osage Avenue. Sled's 12-year-old son, Dima, was there waiting.
According to DeBlasis, the couple had been closely followed by a man and a woman. The woman trailed farther back as they approached 44th Street. There, the man lunged at Hagerhall and grabbed her purse. Hagerhall refused to release it.
"Sled stepped in, trying to help her ward off the man, when the woman who had been following behind punched Hagerhall in the face," said DeBlasis.
Several residents on the block told police they heard the commotion.
"They see a struggle in the street," DeBlasis said. "They see a guy go down on the ground and a woman crying, kneeling there beside him.
"Then a car pulls up - a mid-sized auto - and they [the attackers] jump in and the car takes off east on Larchwood," the chief inspector said.
Detectives described the struggle as fierce. The assailants may have been injured or even stabbed by their own weapon, they said. Officers were checking hospital emergency rooms for reports of anyone seeking treatment for suspicious injuries.
Sled was rushed to the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, where doctors, stunned by the attack on a colleague, worked to save his life. He was pronounced dead at 11:37 p.m. DeBlasis said Sled had five stab wounds, in the neck, shoulder and chest.
According to DeBlasis, the assailants escaped with Hagerhall's purse. She was treated at the same hospital for minor bruises and later released.
Earlier Thursday night, many on the block had gathered for a party at the home of Jeff Garis, a minister for the Brethren of Christ, who moved there and formed a Christian commune in his home about three months ago. There was storytime for the children and apple pie for everyone. The attempt to make caramel apples ended up a gooey mess, but the party lasted for hours, until about 9:30 p.m.
"It was a beautiful party," said Tina Hoffman, who grew up on the block and has lived there on and off for about 50 years. "It was just a glorious, wonderful day. And then we had this. It makes you want to scream. I mean, we're families here."
Garis, one of a number of neighbors who heard the incident and ran out into the street, said he was watching The Three Stooges on TV when he heard what sounded like a firecracker, or maybe a gunshot. Then he heard a raised voice.
He opened the door and saw Sled lying in the street, with Hagerhall leaning over him. She screamed for him to call an ambulance. He did. Meanwhile, another member of his household pulled off his shirt to use as a compress for Sled, who was bleeding profusely. Another neighbor grabbed a blanket to keep Sled warm.
"Everybody in the neighborhood was trying to do something," said Garis, who stood outside in the rain yesterday morning, on a sidewalk covered with golden autumn leaves, trying to make sense of what had happened.
As Hagerhall talked to Sled, and Sled tried to talk back, it was clear that he was rapidly going into shock, Garis said.
A block away from Garis yesterday morning, Sergei Vinogradov, Sled's best friend, stood on the wooden porch of the house where he, Sled, Hagerhall and two other foreign scholars lived in several apartments. Hagerhall was inside. He was protecting her from attention.
When he started talking about Sled, his eyes welled up and he had to walk back into the house for a few minutes before coming out and describing his friend.
"He was fighting because they attacked her. He was brave," said Vinogradov, an organic chemist, also from Moscow, who first met Sled back home in Russia.
Asked what Sled was like, he said, "Well I guess he was the most kind person I ever met in my life."
Sled, who came to Philadelphia five years ago, was separated from his wife, who lives in New Jersey, said Vinogradov. He said Dima went to her late Thursday night. She was identified by police as Valeria Fedosova, of Barrington.
Two years ago, according to Vinogradov, Sled was mugged on his own front porch.
That time he was lucky. The attacker just ran away. And Vinogradov says he considers himself lucky, too.
"I was mugged in April on the Penn campus. But I was lucky. I was just maced," he said.
"Sometimes, if you show you can fight, they just run. But if they have a gun or knife, they use it."
Tears in his eyes and clearly in pain, Vinogradov still said the incident wouldn't cause him to run from West Philadelphia.
"I like West Philadelphia. I never complain about it. This, it can happen elsewhere, anywhere," he said quietly.
On Larchwood, residents spoke of their neighborhood with both pride and frustration.
"I walk my dog usually around 11 p.m.," said Hoffman, who stood under an umbrella outside Garis' house, where she had come to pick up a jacket she left at the party. "I walk with a friend. She walks Cujo, and I walk Sam. I would have been out there last night, except I was so tired.
"This is one or a few people making life miserable for hundreds," she went on. "I mean, 200 kids trick-or-treating without so much as a push."
Garis, who stays home during the day watching his two small children while his wife works in marketing for the university hospital, said he wanted to live in a city community, to find ways to help people in the city.
"This is a pretty tight block. I probably know 60 to 80 percent of the neighbors already," he said. "To me, it was a completely random thing. And it was everything it shouldn't have been. It was right out in the open, right under the light. People were watching. It shouldn't have happened.
"I think it just shows the randomness of violence in our society."
