By Jan Ransom
The Philadelphia Daily News
PHILADELPHIA — Marsha Moore woke up Friday morning and her face was exploding. Blood covered her pillows and sheets.
An intruder had kicked down her rear door, stole a few pieces of jewelry and beat her with a pipe as she slept in her two-story Kingsessing home, police said.
But Moore, 52, a community activist, truancy officer and member of the Police Advisory Commission, doesn’t remember a thing.
“I just touched my face and I felt a gaping gash,” she said. Moore was up the night before preparing for an annual awards ceremony she started years ago to honor Philadelphia veterans. Her husband, Robert, 55, a 12th District police chaplain, veteran and 35-year postal worker, left for work at 6:30 a.m.
About three hours later, Marsha called him frantically about the pain in her face, and she screamed into the phone after she saw blood splattered throughout their bedroom.
She is in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania awaiting facial-reconstruction surgery. The assailant cracked her face in four places, knocked her eye three centimeters back, broke two fingers on her left hand and fractured her arm. She said she has more than 100 stitches throughout her face and head.
“I’m trying to understand why they would come in on somebody like that,” Marsha said. “I’m not mad. I just want to know why.”
In their front window a poster reads, “I proudly support the Philadelphia Police,” and another alerts neighbors that a police chaplain resides at the home on Cecil Street near Kingsessing Avenue.
A police source said the home was targeted because the Moores help police, and Robert and Marsha said they believed the attack was personal.
“They didn’t have to hurt her because she would have given them anything they wanted,” Robert said. “It was personal. They just don’t like us and what we stand for.”
Robert added that the thugs didn’t take cash dangling above their bed, a camcorder, DVD players, computers and expensive jewels. The source said that police have a lead on a possible suspect who lives nearby and that there were at least two people involved.
“You can never tell why people do what they do,” said neighbor Willamae Johnson, 67. “She’s always in the neighborhood helping young people. I don’t see why somebody would do that.”
Copyright 2010 Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC