![\"Left:](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/birdie-02.jpg\")
<\/a>Left: Mike some 10 years after the Osage Avenue disaster, still sporting the scars from his ordeal. Paul Hu KRT\/Newscom<\/strong><\/span>
Right: Birdie, renamed Mike, looking happy and healthy just shy of 16 years old, May 1988. Jim Preston\/Philadelphia Inquirer<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nNew people entered Birdie\u2019s life. One was Trina Dow, an art therapist at Children\u2019s. She asked him to express himself by drawing pictures. Today, Dow remembers Birdie as a \u201csweet kid\u201d and \u201cvery shy. Almost didn\u2019t talk at all.\u201d According to the 1988\u00a0Inquirer<\/em>\u00a0article, which quoted Dow, Birdie\u2019s drawings at first were \u201cweak and incomplete,\u201d but over the next two weeks grew richer: \u201ca house, trees, grass, a family. One figure \u2026 large and round-faced with a big grin, was opening the door of a house. Behind him followed a smiling boy with no arms.\u201dThe large figure appeared to be Andino Ward, a well-dressed man with a deep, smooth radio-announcer voice. Andino was Birdie\u2019s biological father, the one who had given him his birth name, Oyewolffe Momar Puim Ward, which he found in a Khalil Gibran book. He had last seen his son 12 years earlier, when he was just shy of two; that was when Rhonda, the boy\u2019s mother, had taken him to live with MOVE without telling Andino. (Andino and Rhonda were separated at the time, though still married, and Andino was seeing his son regularly.) Despite years of struggle, Andino had been unable to get his son back. Now he was suddenly face-to-face with a child who had only heard about him in stories.<\/span><\/p>\nTwelve years earlier, in 1973, Andino had gone to the MOVE house in Powelton Village for the first time. He knocked on the door, and a man in dreadlocks came out to meet him: John Africa, MOVE\u2019s founder. Andino introduced himself and said that he understood his wife and son were living there and he wanted to talk to them. Africa said no, and explained that although Andino was Birdie\u2019s biological father, he wasn\u2019t really the father; MOVE was the father now. An argument escalated, and Andino ended up jumping on Africa. They were rolling around on the ground when Andino looked up and saw two guys coming out of the door. One was holding a hatchet. \u201cI\u00a0ran<\/em>,\u201d Andino recalls. \u201cI never even looked back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nHe tried to file for divorce, to give himself a shot at formal custody, but no lawyer in the city wanted to take his case because it would mean serving papers on MOVE. Everyone was afraid.<\/span><\/p>\nHe joined the Air Force, where he met the woman who would become his second wife, Amal. After one final failed attempt at reasoning with John Africa\u2014Andino says he went to the house a second time and heard a bullet whiz past his head\u2014he decided to wait the situation out. In 1980, the courts finally granted Andino a divorce. A year passed, then two, then five. He no longer knew for certain that his son was in Philadelphia; there were other MOVE compounds in other states, and members often shuttled between them. In May 1985, Andino followed the standoff on Osage Avenue on the news, unaware his son was inside the house.<\/span><\/p>\nTHE CHILDREN WERE SCARED.<\/strong>\u00a0Of course they were. \u201cObviously, everybody in that house was terrified,\u201d Ramona Africa recalls. \u201cBecause we were being terrorized.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe morning of the bombing, Birdie could hear the police on loudspeakers outside, reading off names, telling people to come out, to surrender. He could hear water from a fire hose blasting the house. His mother and another woman hustled the children downstairs to the garage. They arranged a series of buckets with water in them, dipped blankets in the water, and wrapped the blankets around the children\u2019s heads. Water started rushing in, coming through the windows. Tear gas, too. The house fell into chaos. Birdie heard loud bangs\u2014gunshots. The men were running back and forth. More bangs. Then came the bomb. The whole house shook. Birdie could hear the wood burning, crackling. The basement filled up with smoke. Everything was burning down around them.<\/span><\/p>\nThe adults started trying to get the kids out. They opened the garage door. The kids were crying and crawling over each other, yelling, \u201cWe want to come out!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMeanwhile, many police had moved to the back alley of the house with their guns. Conrad Africa tried to crawl out of the garage with one of the other children, Tomaso. A policeman whose vantage point overlooked the alley, William Trudel, testified that he saw an adult male MOVE member stand up, aim a rifle at police, and fire \u201cfour or five quick rounds.\u201d In his deposition, Birdie said that Conrad was carrying no gun, only a monkey wrench, which he\u2019d used to open the bolt on the door.<\/span><\/p>\nThe next thing Birdie knew, he was standing in a gully flooding with water. The house was engulfed in flames. He looked above him and saw a tree on fire, pieces of wood falling on him.<\/span><\/p>\nA policeman in the back alley, James Berghaier, spotted Birdie from a distance of about 50 yards, several houses away. \u201cHe literally came through the fire,\u201d Berghaier recalls. \u201cHe was barefoot. He didn\u2019t run.\u201d Berghaier hadn\u2019t thought there were any children inside the MOVE house; he\u2019d been told that the children were removed earlier.<\/span><\/p>\nRamona was up on an elevated walkway. She yelled to Birdie, who was less than a story below, to come up, and put out her hand. He tried to grab it but slipped and fell. He hit his head on the ground and blacked out.<\/span><\/p>\nBerghaier handed his shotgun to another officer, Tommy Mellor. \u201cI\u2019m gonna go get the kid,\u201d he said. Mellor watched his back, and a third officer, Mike Tursi, who would later testify that he had just seen a MOVE member come out of the house and shoot in the direction of the police, followed along with him. For the police, it was an uncertain, confusing situation. But Berghaier slogged through water and smoke to get to Birdie. He saw the boy try to get up, but then Birdie stumbled into the water.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen he first saw Berghaier, Birdie hesitated and said, \u201cDon\u2019t shoot me! Don\u2019t shoot me!\u201d Berghaier thought to himself: \u201cAre you kidding me?\u201d Then Birdie said that he was hungry. It only took seconds for Birdie to realize that Berghaier was no threat to him. \u201cCan you imagine what that kid\u2019s thought process was?\u201d Berghaier says today.<\/span><\/p>\nHe grabbed Birdie by his arm and dragged him away from the fire, and other officers conveyed him to a van. Inside the van, Birdie could see the smoke and the fire, the lights. He started screaming, \u201cI want my mom! I want my mom!\u201d And Michael Mally snapped his picture.<\/span><\/p>\nANDINO WARD SPENT<\/strong>\u00a0a lot of that first week at Children\u2019s, learning how to care for his son\u2019s burns. After Andino took him home, he had to debride the burns every day, twice a day, for months: removing the antibiotic and dead tissue with wet gauze, scraping this raw red stuff from his son\u2019s body. Even with pain medication, his son screamed and screamed. There were times when Andino had to excuse himself to weep.<\/span><\/p>\nThere was so much the boy didn\u2019t know. He couldn\u2019t read, couldn\u2019t write. He didn\u2019t know his ABCs. He didn\u2019t know how money worked. He didn\u2019t know what a store was or how you used it. He didn\u2019t know that men had landed on the moon.<\/span><\/p>\nAndino decided that to give his son a fresh start, he needed to give him a new name. He read names out of a Bible until the boy picked one he liked: Michael. And then a middle name, Moses, after the biblical Moses, the lost boy rescued from the Nile.<\/span><\/p>\nInside his home in Hatfield, Andino introduced Michael Moses Ward to television, to\u00a0Sesame Street<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Three Stooges<\/em>. Mike warmed to TV instantly, but there were other elements of his new life that he resisted. It took Mike a month to let Andino cut his overgrown fingernails. Then came the food war. MOVE believed cooked food was impure. Mike refused to eat the food Andino offered: chicken, rice, baked sweet potatoes. Finally, one day Andino insisted that Mike eat some cooked food. Mike said no, and Andino wrestled him to the ground. \u201cI was dripping with sweat,\u201d he says. \u201cLike a battle with an alligator or something.\u201d After an hour and a half, Mike went limp, stopped struggling. At dinner that night, he ate fried chicken, sweet potatoes, collard greens and apple pie.<\/span><\/p>\nIn October 1985, five months after the bombing, Andino accompanied his son to a videotaped deposition taken by a city attorney as part of the city\u2019s inquiry into the bombing. Also present at the deposition was a man who would become an important mentor to Mike over the years: David Shrager, one of Philadelphia\u2019s most prominent trial lawyers. Shrager was representing the Wards in a case they\u2019d brought against the city\u2014a case that would eventually bring them a lump sum of $840,000 and monthly payments on top of that for the rest of their lives, according to the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0in 1991. (Andino says most of the lump sum was eaten up by attorneys\u2019 fees, and that the annuities were never enough to make them rich. But they were enough for a decent middle-class life.) Aside from testimony he gave in 1996 in Ramona Africa\u2019s litigation against the city, Mike had no further contact with her or MOVE. \u201cAndino would not allow us to have any contact with Birdie,\u201d Ramona says.<\/span><\/p>\nOver time, Mike started to open up. He said the MOVE children were forced to fight with one another as a means of teaching them to be self-sufficient. He feared that somehow MOVE would discover where he was living. \u201cHe was always afraid that they were going to come back and get him,\u201d Andino says. \u201cAnd I assured him that that would not happen.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nGradually, Mike adapted to life outside the MOVE compound. Andino bought him a bicycle and a skateboard; Mike started meeting other kids. In 1987, when Mike was 15, Andino enrolled him at North Penn High in Lansdale, a school with an almost all-white student body and a black principal, and before long, with the help of teachers who worked to integrate him into that new environment, he was thriving. He started to hang out at the Boys & Girls Club of Lansdale. He took up weight lifting.<\/span><\/p>\nOne kid from the neighborhood, Jerel Hopkins, saw Mike lifting weights one day and introduced himself. Initially, Mike seemed like a \u201cshy, quiet kid,\u201d Hopkins says, but as they got to know each other, Mike \u201ccame out of his shell a little bit, became one of the guys.\u201d Mike and his friends did normal teenage stuff: drove up and down the central business strip in Lansdale, hung out at the mall. Mike\u2019s friends and family remember him as a sharp dresser who got a haircut every week. \u201cHe was so fashionable,\u201d says Sofia Cowan, Mike\u2019s older sister. \u201cMaybe it was because of the scars and things that he had.\u201d He played on the football team\u2014fullback and cornerback. \u201cI think he was one of the hardest hitters you ever saw,\u201d says Perry Sanford, Mike\u2019s best friend at the time and for years after. \u201cI said, \u2018I think you\u2019re doin\u2019 that to get some of that rage out.\u2019 He said, \u2018I just love to hit. I\u2019m a physical person.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nSanford says Mike only talked about MOVE occasionally: \u201cIt would just be random stuff. Mostly it would be like how he was bred to be the next leader \u2026 and he was like, \u2018We just never wanted to be that. All the kids wanted to play, but it was forbidden.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cHe became his own person,\u201d Sanford continues. \u201cHe didn\u2019t become Birdie Africa. He was Mike Ward, the cool guy, a nice, good-looking kid. I don\u2019t think anyone could say they had a bad story to tell about him. We were all in awe that he came out to be as cool as he was.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAFTER GRADUATION,<\/strong>\u00a0Mike spent a semester at a community college but decided it wasn\u2019t for him. He attended barber school, learned to cut hair. He had a pet bird, a bright-yellow-and-cream cockatiel named Herbert. This is where the trail goes cold. We don\u2019t know a lot about Michael Ward in his 20s and 30s. Shrager and Andino protected him from the media, giving him space to find his path, and Mike was glad to retreat, to live a life in the shadows, head either down or swiveling behind him. \u201cHe sequestered his world and made sure that everybody stayed out of it,\u201d Andino says. \u201cHe never wanted anyone to get too close.\u201d Says Cowan, \u201cI kind of learned to not ask a whole lot of questions about what was going on with him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nDuring the \u201990s, Mike gave only one in-depth interview, a remarkable one, in 1995, to\u00a0Inquirer<\/em>reporter Mark Bowden, now a national magazine writer and author. By this point, Mike had become a father. He was living in a local apartment with his baby daughter, Rhonda, and his girlfriend.<\/span><\/p>\nBowden recalls Mike as a polite, neatly groomed man of 23, \u201csomeone who clearly took a great deal of pride in his appearance.\u201d Bowden says he didn\u2019t have to do anything special to draw Mike out. \u201cHe was clearly someone who had waited a long time to talk about this,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\nSome of Mike\u2019s memories were fond: He spoke with warmth and respect about Delbert Africa, who\u2019d been beaten by police in 1978 when trying to surrender unarmed, and about Conrad Africa, who used to take the kids to the park. \u201cHe was real friendly, almost like one of the kids,\u201d Mike said.<\/span><\/p>\nBut Mike also spoke of physical and emotional abuse. Up until now, when people felt sorry for him, it was because of the bombing. It was because of the story that the only other person who made it out of the fire, Ramona Africa, was telling, and is still telling today to anyone who will listen: a credible story of a government unhinged, willing to use appalling force to dominate and kill. \u201cPeople still want to question MOVE instead of questioning the outrageousness of what happened,\u201d Africa says. \u201cMurder, rape, robbery, gun smuggling, drug trafficking, being pedophiles? None of that. None of that. We weren\u2019t accused of anything that would warrant what this government came at us with.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMike\u2019s story was more personal. He made it clear to Bowden that for him, the primary trauma wasn\u2019t the bombing but instead his childhood with MOVE. He had feared John Africa, who punished any disobedience he perceived in Mike by separating the boy from his mother: \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t let her talk to me or let me talk to her. It was hard for both of us.\u201d He said his mother eventually soured on MOVE and dreamed of escape\u2014\u201cShe got real depressed\u201d\u2014but she was too afraid. \u201cThey threatened to kill me if she ran away,\u201d he said. (Bowden spoke with Rhonda\u2019s mother, Ramona Shannon, who confirmed that Rhonda had wanted to escape.) Mike also told a horrifying story of what happened one time when the children all cut their hair in defiance of John Africa\u2019s rules. They figured that after they cut their hair, they would run away, but \u201cwe didn\u2019t know where to go. We chickened out or something.\u201d Mike told Bowden:<\/span><\/p>\nWhen the adults came for us and saw we had cut our hair, they didn\u2019t say anything to us for a couple of days. Then they had one of their meetings upstairs, and they called us up. \u2026 They told us if we ran away, they would track us down and \u2018cycle\u2019 us. That was their word for killing people. Then we went back downstairs. I was sitting up on this bed, and Frank [Africa] came downstairs and started yelling at us again. Mostly, he was yelling at me. I was always keeping to myself. I didn\u2019t like them. I guess they thought I was the strongest one or something. Anyway, Frank was yelling, and he came over and punched me in the face. I fell off the bed, and I was, like, knocked out.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nBowden thought Mike was a \u201cvery credible\u201d source. \u201cI find that when people have a grudge, or when people have an agenda, that they overdo it,\u201d he says. \u201cHis experience, as he related it, seemed real to me. It didn\u2019t seem like a rant, that he was angry and out to get them. And there was also no anger in his manner. It was more fear. And I don\u2019t think that can be readily faked.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWhen asked about Mike\u2019s claims that the adults threatened to \u201ccycle\u201d the children and that Frank punched him, Ramona Africa says, \u201cI never saw anything like that. That\u2019s ridiculous. His mother wouldn\u2019t have tolerated that.\u201d As for Mike\u2019s desire to escape, Africa says, \u201cI mean, you don\u2019t know any other children that are raised a certain way that people know is good for them and they don\u2019t like it? They don\u2019t like eating certain foods that they are pushed to eat? They don\u2019t like being allowed to engage in certain things? \u2026 You\u2019re talking about a child\u2019s perception.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTWO YEARS AFTER<\/strong>\u00a0the Bowden interview, in 1997, Mike joined the Army. He worked for the next four years as a military videographer, shooting training videos, but it didn\u2019t suit him. Eventually he got a job as a long-haul trucker, spending five days a week on the highways, alone with his thoughts.<\/span><\/p>\nEven as he tried to recede into anonymity, journalists continued to seek him out. In 2001, a documentarian named Jason Osder began looking for a way to make a film about the MOVE bombing. As an 11-year-old living in Montgomery County, he had seen the smoke rising above the skyline that day, and it stayed with him. Osder, now an assistant professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, eventually found his way to the basement of Temple University\u2019s Paley Library, started looking through old VHS tapes, and discovered 13-year-old Mike\u2019s October 1985 deposition. There was something foreboding about Mike\u2019s downcast face and demeanor, and the very first frames established that he had come into this world from a place with wildly different codes and values.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThat was the moment,\u201d Osder says, \u201cI was like, \u2018There is a film here.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWith the blessing of Mike\u2019s mentor, Shrager, Osder sat down with Mike in 2002. Mike was 30 now, the father of two.<\/span><\/p>\nIn the footage, Mike could easily pass for 19. His head is shaved, and he has a thin black mustache. He wears a stylish sweater. His eyes are dark and his voice is quiet as he tells the story from the beginning, seemingly with difficulty, reluctance. \u201cMOVE was part of my past,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean, I have two children. I don\u2019t force anything on my children. I let them do what they want. They make their own decisions. Healthy decisions. But I mean, it was basically\u2014some of it I do respect. I try not to eat a lot of \u2026 I try not to eat a lot of red meats and whatever. Things like that. I try not to eat that stuff. Some of it was good and some of it\u2019s bad. You take what\u2019s good and leave what\u2019s bad.\u201d At the end of the interview, Osder asks him if he blames the police for the bombing. \u201cIn the beginning, I mean, I did,\u201d Mike says. \u201cBut I mean, looking at it now, I mean, they both had a part to play in it. But I think they should have gave us time to get out, maybe. Maybe my mom would be alive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAs compelling as the interview is, none of it appears in Osder\u2019s film. He decided he could tell a more powerful story with archival footage exclusively.\u00a0In Let the Fire Burn<\/em>, Osder comes back to Mike\u2019s deposition again and again, using a child\u2019s testimony to guide the viewer through a wilderness of competing narratives and shocking events. It works spectacularly, for a couple of reasons. One, Mike is honest. He seems guileless, incapable of lying\u2014a valuable trait in a witness to a tragedy whose every component is highly contested by adults with motives and agendas. \u201cI realized that as a witness, he was unassailable,\u201d Osder says. \u201cHe might be wrong, but he\u2019s still telling you his truth.\u201d Two, Mike is sympathetic. He\u2019s the person we identify with. How could we not? No one has been through what Mike has, but \u201ceveryone relates to being a kid.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThis is exactly why Philadelphians have clung to Mike and his story over the years. It would take multiple lifetimes to untangle every thread of the MOVE bombing\u2014a knot of racial animus, class resentments, police misconduct, political cravenness and civic negligence. But we don\u2019t have to try if we focus on Mike. Exactly one indisputably blameless person emerged from Osage Avenue that day in 1985. Jason Osder\u2019s film only acknowledges and brings to the foreground the centrality of Mike Ward\/Birdie Africa in the imagination of Philadelphia\u2014that Mike\/Birdie became not just the lasting symbol of the bombing, but the repository of an entire city\u2019s fascination, horror and guilt.<\/span><\/p>\nOsder finished the movie early last year. He decided not to send a copy to Mike, thinking he\u2019d prefer not to be disturbed. He figured Mike could attend a local showing if he was interested, and certainly he\u2019d be welcome. A week before the film\u2019s October theatrical opening in New York, Osder got the news.<\/span><\/p>\nACCORDING TO THE<\/strong>\u00a0autopsy report of the medical examiner of Brevard County, Florida, Mike was healthy when he died. Heart normal, arteries clear. No evidence of aneurysm, skull fracture or liver damage. Toxicology tests for evidence of drug use\u2014amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cannabinoids, cocaine, methadone, opiates\u2014were all negative. Only two findings were remarkable: The lungs contained a little less than half an ounce of \u201cblood-tinged watery fluid,\u201d consistent with death by drowning; and the body\u2019s blood ethanol level was .156\u2014enough to produce disorientation, but not generally enough to be fatal. The report listed the cause of death as drowning due to acute alcohol intoxication. He was 41.<\/span><\/p>\nIt happened on a Carnival cruise ship. September 20, 2013. Most of the Ward family was aboard: Andino, Andino\u2019s wife Amal, Mike, Mike\u2019s two sisters and their significant others\u2014a big family vacation to celebrate Andino and Amal\u2019s 30th wedding anniversary. It was the last day of the cruise; the ship was heading back to Florida from the Caribbean.<\/span><\/p>\nOver the past week, Andino felt, they\u2019d all had a great time\u2014Mike especially. He\u2019d been divorced for years, but his daughter was living with him, and he was happy about that. He went scuba diving for the first time in his life, off the coast of Honduras. He ate and enjoyed new kinds of food, took a swim with dolphins, even spoke with his family about buying a piece of vacation property. \u201cYou could see that he was really beginning to turn the corner on some of these other demons in terms of his trust issues,\u201d Andino says.<\/span><\/p>\nThat last afternoon, Andino took a nap. He awoke to some commotion, assumed it was just people having fun. He drifted back to sleep. The next thing he knew, his wife was telling him to get up: \u201cDino, come here! Something\u2019s happened.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nStill groggy, Andino wandered out to join his wife on their small balcony, which overlooked the pool area. He could see all these people huddled around the base of a hot tub. A pair of African-American legs was splayed out. In the room next door, Andino heard his daughter Sofia scream out: \u201cOh my God! Mike was in the hot tub.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAndino ran downstairs, through the casino to the pool deck. It was all taped off. He busted through. He heard his other daughter saying, over and over, \u201cMike, Mike, Mike.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAndino asked her what happened. She said that Mike had asked her boyfriend for a Cuban cigar. He said he wanted to smoke it in the hot tub. They asked if he wanted company, but Mike had said, \u201cI just want to relax and chill by myself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTo state the obvious here: Mike\u2019s death doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense. \u201cHe was intensely fit,\u201d Andino says. \u201cIt\u2019s just bizarre. You\u2019re talking about four feet of water. How does that happen?\u201d Mike\u2019s friends say they didn\u2019t notice any signs of depression. \u201cIt seemed like he was in a good place in general,\u201d says Jerel Hopkins. \u201cNew house, new-construction home. Traveling around in a Beemer. Single.\u201d Asked if he thinks there\u2019s any chance that Mike killed himself, Perry Sanford responds immediately: \u201cNot at all. He\u2019s too strong of a person. He\u2019s overcome so much.\u201d He adds, \u201cWhen I first heard it, I thought, did he slip and fall, hit his head? Anything. It has to be\u00a0something<\/em>. The kid\u2019s like Superman.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe death of the former Birdie Africa was national news, but many of the stories had a strangely impersonal quality. It turns out to be hard to say goodbye to someone you never really knew. In the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, Margalit Fox wrote that Mike was a survivor of \u201cone of the most shameful episodes in Philadelphia\u2019s history\u201d and quoted from the 1995 Bowden interview; NPR called Mike \u201can icon of the disaster,\u201d also quoting from the Bowden piece. \u201cI always thought Michael would outlive me,\u201d says Berghaier, now retired from the police force and working as a janitor in a Catholic high school. He remains haunted by thoughts of the five children he was unable to save: \u201cYou do something right and you pay for it the rest of your life \u2026 I\u2019ll get my peace when I die.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe surviving remnant of MOVE, led by Ramona Africa, took issue with much of this coverage, releasing a flurry of letters in protest. In one, an anonymous MOVE member writes, \u201cMOVE wasn\u2019t the threat to Birdie. Your dying civilized system took Birdie down.\u201d Ramona Africa tells me that Mike\u2019s death \u201cbroke my heart. I mean, of course everybody is gonna go one day. But the familiarity with Birdie that I have, and the MOVE family had, and for him to die like that, on a cruise ship\u2014to drown in a hot tub? You know?\u201d Then she adds, \u201cWhat you need to concentrate on is how this government tried to kill him. That\u2019s what\u2019s important.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nFirst appeared in the March, 2014 issue of\u00a0<\/em>Philadelphia\u00a0magazine.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n>via:\u00a0http:\/\/www.phillymag.com\/articles\/birdie-africa-lost-boy\/?all=1<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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FEBRUARY 27, 2014 Birdie Africa: The Lost Boy Almost 30 years ago, 13-year-old Birdie Africa became the face of the MOVE disaster, the only child to survive the bombing of that infamous Osage Avenue house. Last Fall he drowned in a cruise-ship hot tub, as alone and mysterious in death as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[6],"tags":[4,12,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176435712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176435712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176435712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176435716,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176435712\/revisions\/176435716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176435712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176435712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176435712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n![\"Birdie](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/birdie-01.jpg\")
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