Remembering the 1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia 40 years later – NBC10 Philadelphia

It’s been 40 years since the 1985 MOVE bombing, an event that changed Philadelphia forever and remains a dark moment in the city’s history.

MOVE was a Philadelphia Black liberation group led by its founder John Africa. The group practiced a back-to-nature lifestyle that shunned modern conveniences, preached equal rights for animals and rejected government authority. They frequently clashed with police and many of their practices drew complaints from residents in Philadelphia’s Cobbs Creek neighborhood.

On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police officers seeking to oust MOVE members from their headquarters engaged in a 90-minute shootout with the group before using a helicopter to drop a bomb on their house on 6221 Osage Avenue. Six adults and five children inside the MOVE headquarters were killed in the bombing. The explosion caused a fire that then spread and burned down more than 60 homes in Cobbs Creek, leaving 250 people homeless, as emergency personnel were told to stand down.

A 1986 commission report called the decision to bomb an occupied home “unconscionable.” MOVE survivors were awarded a $1.5 million judgment in a 1996 lawsuit. Yet despite two grand jury investigations, no one from city government was ever criminally charged.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the bombing, NBC10 spoke with those who witnessed the events of that fateful day, including two residents who still live on Osage Avenue and a veteran TV photojournalist who was in the middle of the chaos.

To commemorate the 40 year anniversary of the 1985 MOVE bombing, NBC10’s Erin Coleman spoke with two longtime Cobbs Creek residents who witnessed the incident that changed Philadelphia forever. 

While most of the residents who lived on Osage Avenue in 1985 are gone, the ones who remain continue to deal with the complicated history of the bombing. James Taylor was 19-years-old when he and his family were evacuated from their home on May 12, 1985.

“Sunday morning, Mother’s Day, knock came at the door,” Taylor said. “Grab enough stuff for 24 hours and evacuate.”

Taylor couldn’t imagine what he would watch transpire in his neighborhood a day later.

“I was walking through the alley and I seen SWAT officers coming through the alley with a big metal case. I knew what was coming then,” Taylor said. “Me and my buddies were climbing up on the roof on 61st and Osage. They made it up on the roof. By the time the bomb dropped before I could make it up to the top, the concussion made me fall off the pole I was climbing.”

Taylor said his family’s home was one of the dozens destroyed during the subsequent fire.

“I seen all these tough guys, these grown men crying and I’m wondering why they’re crying. Because they lost everything they owned,” he said. “I even seen my father. I seen him crying and that’s when the reality set in.”

George Duncan, another resident, witnessed the fire as well.

“And then they let it burn and they killed 11 Black men, women and children,” Duncan said.

The rebuilding of the neighborhood took decades. Attempts in the 1980s and 1990s saw construction not built up to code. The city offered impacted homeowners buyout offers in the 2000s. It wasn’t until 2020 however that the city considered the renovation complete.

“From 1985 to 2025, I’ve been watching my neighbors die off behind this,” Taylor said. “Most of these are new people that moved around here but they know that they’re living on a historical block.”

Residents who remember the bombing don’t want the world to forget.

“You hear about Ruby Ridge. You hear about Waco. But you don’t hear about Osage Avenue,” Taylor said. “We all happened around that same time. You never hear about Osage Avenue. I wonder why?”

At the same time, they’re also ready to turn the page.

“You can’t move on when it’s in your face every year. You can’t move on,” Taylor said. “It’s a part of life now. It’s a part of life that you don’t really want to look at.”

Longtime NBC10 photojournalist Pete Kane was only hundreds of feet away from the shootout and deadly bombing of the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia in 1985. For the 40-year anniversary of that fateful day, Pete spoke with NBC10’s Matt DeLucia about what he witnessed and the impact it continues to have on him decades later.

It’s difficult for Pete Kane to move on as well. Kane – a longtime photojournalist with NBC10 – was covering the MOVE standoff for television. While other news crews were set up blocks away, Kane was determined to get closer. He went inside a house only a few hundred feet from the MOVE headquarters on 6221 Osage Avenue.

“The second floor window. That middle window there. That’s where I was,” he said. “I befriended someone on the corner and said, ‘Hey, look. I need to see Osage Avenue.’ So the guy knocked on a couple of doors. Most people said ‘No.’ But that house right there, the family said, ‘Yeah.’”

For 24 hours, Kane remained in the house.

“I put my microphone outside the window. Shut the window, put the blinds up by eight inches,” Kane said. “So every time they looked up at the windows up there, they saw no change.”

Kane watched as the standoff and shootout unfolded between the MOVE members and Philadelphia police.

“I watched them change shifts. I watched them climb up the ladder with their assault rifles and things like that,” Kane said.

As thousands of rounds of gunfire were exchanged between MOVE members and police, Kane kept filming.

“Fear was going through my mind because I could feel the bullets whizzing by,” Kane said. “And that time I had a three-month-old son at home and I didn’t think I would get home to be able to see him again.”

Kane didn’t have a live truck to send back to the TV studio and no way to send back video. He only had a telephone.

“It took a lot of guts to do what he did. And he had to be frightened because we were frightened for him,” Steve Levy, who was on the anchor desk with Larry Kane during the MOVE bombing, told NBC10. “I tried to get him to relax as much as he could in that situation. Imagine being relaxed when bullets are flying.”

Then came the moment that will remain forever etched in Philadelphia’s history. The moment Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on MOVE’s home.

“The word unique is overused,” Levy said. “But nothing like that has ever approached unique on the air in television. Watching your city burn.”

Kane felt the house shake. He then saw black smoke coming from the MOVE headquarters. He watched helplessly as the fire spread.

“It was 45 minutes after the bomb was dropped that they started fighting the fire,” Kane said.

It was only when Kane ran out of videotape that he ran out of the backdoor, three hours after the bombing.

“My last piece of video was showing flames at the top of the roof of those homes,” he said. “So when I came back the next day, I figured it was still there. Those homes were all gone.”

Kane worked with channel 10 for 47 years. Nothing, he says, has ever come close to what he witnessed and experienced during the MOVE bombing.

“Even when I escaped the house running down the alley, I figured any minute I’ll get a bullet in the back of the head,” he said.

Kane walked the block 40 years later and still felt the weight of what he witnessed in 1985.

“I start hearing the voices of the cops outside the house,” Kane said. “The thing that hurts the most is when that fire was burning, I hear the cops outside the window saying, ‘They’re coming out the back! They’re coming out the back!'”

Despite the trauma he still deals with, Kane told NBC10 he doesn’t regret being inside the house and witnessing what happened.

“I’m glad I did it because the fact is, I think it answered a lot of questions showing that video of what really happened out there,” he said.

To this day, however, Kane still wishes it was only a bad dream and not a reality.

“You can’t let it go,” he said. “You know, just can’t let it go.”

Tuesday, May 13, 2025, will mark the 40th anniversary of the 1985 MOVE bombing that killed six adults and five children and led to a fire that destroyed dozens of homes in Philadelphia’s Cobbs Creek neighborhood. As the anniversary approaches, City Council introduced a resolution declaring May 13 as a day of reflection and remembrance. NBC10’s Yukare Nakayama has the story and spoke with Mike Africa Jr., a MOVE representative and family member of the victims who died in the bombing. 

In 2020, City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier (D-Philadelphia, 3rd District) led the push for City Council to formally apologize for the MOVE bombing. Five years later, on Thursday, May 8, 2025, Gauthier introduced a resolution declaring May 13 as a day of reflection and remembrance in honor of the victims.

“Before I move for adoption of the resolution, I ask that we observe a moment of silence for the victims who lost their lives in the MOVE bombing 40 years ago,” Gauthier said on Thursday.

Gauthier — who represents the community where the MOVE bombing occurred — told NBC10 she hopes to make the remembrance an annual event.

“If we don’t sort of dissect the MOVE bombing and why it happened, I think we won’t be able to heal as a city,” she said. “And it’s also important to commemorate what happened so that it will never happen again.”

Mike Africa Jr., a MOVE representative and family member of the victims who died, spoke during Thursday’s meeting. He said he remembers the bombing like it was yesterday.

“There were people in the neighborhoods coming up to me telling me that they dropped a bomb on MOVE,” he said. “There was disbelief. It was chaos. You know to see your family members watching their family members on the television and being killed is unbelievable.”

Africa Jr. told NBC10 he was surprised by the resolution.

“You know, I grew up believing that all politicians were liars,” he said. “And that’s probably true for most. But Jamie Gauthier kept her word.”

For Africa Jr., the resolution is only the beginning and he’s looking to create a memorial for the MOVE members who died.

“It means that we have to keep working,” he said. “This is not the end. This is the beginning.”