By Caitlin Francke and Thomas J. Gibbons Jr., The Philadelphia Inquirer
It was an odd match to start with. He was a career criminal, in the words of one prosecutor. And she is a law professor at Temple University who once defended him in court.
wednesday morning, an argument between the couple - about gas in the car - led Louis Rogers, 25, to hurl furniture from a 25th-story balcony and then set two apartments on fire before plunging to his death from a downtown building.
The bizarre tragedy events played out in Philadelphia’s tony Washington Square neighborhood, in the 596-unit Hopkinson House. The fire destroyed the two apartments, damaged several others and forced dozens of residents to evacuate. The street in front of the building was littered with mangled furniture: a brown leather couch, a black computer keyboard and papers that fluttered in the wind. A toaster was lodged in a tree.
Rogers landed on the overhang above the building’s entrance in the 600 block of South Washington Square after a SWAT team member trying to save him lost his grasp.
“It was surreal,” said Richard Woodside, a retired schoolteacher who lives on the 10th floor. He recounted watching a stream of furniture - an armoire, a box spring, a television - zoom past his window.
Then he saw a body.
“I saw him fall. I don’t think I am going to sleep tonight,” Woodside said.
Police Captain Thomas J. Quinn, commander of Central Detectives, said the dispute between Rogers and his girlfriend, Vanessa Bellino, a legal writing professor at Temple, began last night and resumed this morning.
The fight was apparently over an empty gas tank, Quinn said. At About 9:25 a.m., a furious Rogers started throwing household possessions from the window. He brandished a samurai sword from the balcony.
Besides the couch, Rogers threw out a birdcage with birds in it and a television that crushed the back window of a parked car.
“The next thing you know, the place was on fire,” Quinn said. Investigators said the fire appeared to have been set in some bedding in a closet.
Next, Rogers dropped from the 25th-floor balcony to the one below, breaking into that apartment through the sliding-glass porch doors.
“The next thing you know, that place is on fire,” Quinn said.
Rogers then lowered himself to the 23d-floor balcony to break into that apartment. A SWAT team officer arrived; Rogers hurled his cell phone at him. Rogers then started to go over the side of the balcony. A SWAT officer, Nicholas Campolongo, grabbed him around the wrist but was unable to hold on because he appeared to only have a grip on Rogers’ sleeve.
Police said it was unclear whether Rogers slipped or jumped.
Quinn called Campolongo a hero, noting that the officer easily could have been pulled over the 23d-floor ledge to his own death. A SWAT commander said tonight that Campolongo would have no comment.
The tenant in the second apartment destroyed apartment was Tom McNamara, a deputy managing editor at The Inquirer, who lived directly below Rogers.
McNamara, 53, first heard the sound of furniture moving, and as he was getting dressed, he saw what appeared to be a large chair flying past his window.
When McNamara heard Rogers cursing at police on the street, warning them not to come up, he said he decided that “this is getting ugly. I’m going to leave.”
He was outside when he saw smoke pouring out of Rogers’ apartment. “I just couldn’t watch,” he said, fearing that the fire might spread to his apartment.
He returned to the lobby and, after hearing that Rogers had fallen to his death, found out about the fire on the 24th floor.
McNamara was allowed to see his apartment this afternoon. He said the interior was black, with the windows shattered, the ceiling pulled down and a dividing wall apparently incinerated.
“Everything’s gone,” he said.
McNamara maintains a second residence in Washington, D.C., with his wife. They were staying at a Center City hotel tonight.
He said he was struck by “a sense of randomness.”
“Of all the people and all the places in the world,” he said, “a guy with a samurai sword jumps on your balcony, setting your apartment on fire.”
Residents reported that Rogers and Bellino had a troubled history and that police often were summoned to the apartment. Quinn labeled their relationship “volatile.”
Bellino, 32, is a former public defender in Bucks County, where Rogers has been convicted of assault and theft, according to Diane Gibbons, the county’s Ddistrict Aattorney.
Bellino represented Rogers at a hearing in December 1999, court records show. The exact charges were unclear tonight.
Bellino declined comment. “I’m going to ask you to respect my privacy and accept that I don’t have anything to say,” she said.
While Bellino practiced law, Rogers was often caught breaking it. He has been convicted 12 times in three years of crimes in Bucks County, according to Gibbons.
“He was a career criminal,” Gibbons said.
In November, Rogers was indicted on federal charges that he participated in an interstate burglary ring, federal records show. He was accused, along with 14 other men, of committing about 50 burglaries and armed robberies over a two-year period ending in July 2001.
The indictment alleges that on March 31, 2001, Rogers and two others stole 92 guns, including an Uzi, from a gun shop in Croydon, Bucks County.
He faced about 30 years in prison and has been in and out of court and jail for the past few months, Gibbons said.
Neighbors said Rogers exhibited erratic and dangerous behavior.
Resident Mike Gallucci said he saw Rogers pointing a crossbow this summer from the balcony into the park. He fired the weapon, but the arrow bolt was errant.
“I looked down, and I said, ‘I can’t believe this guy is aiming a cross-bow. He’s going to kill somebody,’” Gallucci said. “This is just a person who should not have been in a building like this from the get-go.”
Resident Barbara Nocon was in the couple’s apartment last night with an eye toward renting it for a relative. Bellino’s lease was up for renewal expires next month.
Today’s events are all a mystery to Rogers’ father, Louis Rogers Sr., who is now planning funeral arrangements. He said that he had heard his son had a temper, but that he had never witnessed it.
“I never saw this side of him,” said the elder Rogers, who raised his son and three other children in Bristol. “Me and him have a good relationship.”
Rogers said his son visited him every day and they would go out driving.
“I can’t look forward to that no more,” he said.