pgn Philadelphia Gay News LGBT NEWS SINCE 1976
Vol. 40 No. 29 July 15-21, 2016
Pulse fundraiser shifts benefactors
Selected summer music PAGE 21
HONESTY • INTEGRITY • PROFESSIONALISM
A new moniker and award for Divine Light shelter
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Family Portrait: Sheldon Crooks is a world of fashion PAGE 26
Kathryn Knott released from prison By Jen Colletta jen@epgn.com
PRAYERS FOR PEACE: Congregants of Whosoever Metropolitan Community Church and University Lutheran Church joined for a Community Prayer Service for Peace & Healing July 10. The event, at 37th and Chestnut streets, was organized in response to last week’s shootings of two black men by police as well as five police officers by a sniper. Attendees prayed for peace and sang “Amazing Grace” and “We Shall Overcome.” Photo: Scott A. Drake
After five months and four days in Riverside Correctional Facility, Kathryn Knott is a free woman. At a hearing Tuesday, Common Pleas Judge Roxanne Covington granted Knott’s petition for parole. After completing paperwork, Knott left the Criminal Justice Center with her parents and attorney Bill Brennan. Brennan gave a brief statement to reporters outside the CJC that his client served her sentence “with dignity” and was “pleased to be out in the sunshine.” Knott declined to comment, with Brennan citing pending litigation — a civil lawsuit from victims Andrew Haught and Zachary Hesse. Knott was one of three people, along with Philip Williams and Kevin Harrigan, arrested in connection with a September 2014 attack on Hesse and Haught, a gay couple. Williams and Harrigan took plea deals in exchange for probation and community service, but Knott took her case to
trial, where a jury found her guilty of four misdemeanors in December. Brennan filed a parole petition last week, requesting she be released at her minimum date, July 8; she was sentenced to five to 10 months in prison Feb. 8. PAGE 9
KATHRYN KNOTT WITH HER FATHER (LEFT) AND ATTORNEY OUTSIDE THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE CENTER TUESDAY Photo: Scott A. Drake
Evidence suppression to be considered in Redding case DA increasing outreach to LGBT At a conference in May, Ransom said she By Paige Cooperstein community wanted results as soon as possible regardpaige@epgn.com The defense would like to suppress some evidence against the man accused in the October killing of transgender woman Keisha Jenkins. A date for the hearing on a motion to suppress was expected to be set by the end of the week. The suspect, Pedro Redding, 25, has been evaluated by a medical expert while he remains in custody at the CurranFromhold Correctional Facility. Steven Gross, who represents Redding, told Judge Lillian Ransom at a July 13 pretrial conference that he had preliminary results from a phone conversation with the doctor, but was awaiting a final report.
ing Redding’s condition after he stopped taking medication for an undisclosed ailment. Redding, of the 4500 block of North 13th Street, is charged with murder, conspiracy and robbery in connection with the Oct. 6 fatal shooting of Jenkins, 22. Jenkins was assaulted by several men in Logan after getting out of a car at 13th and Wingohocking streets around 2:30 a.m. She was shot twice in the back during the attack. Police do not believe Redding was the shooter, and no further arrests have been made. Police said the motive was robbery and there’s no evidence to indicate Jenkins was targeted for being transgender. n
DNC coverage begins July 22
By Paige Cooperstein paige@epgn.com
Kathryn Knott became something of a tipping point for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the city’s LGBT residents. The community had a flurry of questions about the woman who went to trial in relation to the 2014 attack of a gay couple in Center City, after her two male codefendants took plea deals that came with community service instead of jail time. To address the issue, Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams attended a Liberty City LGBT Democratic Club meeting in January.
“They were expressing their concerns originally when two of the three codefendants had pled,” he said. “They had questions about why that was and what the justification was.” Williams said Mike Barry, the prosecutor on the case, explained the victims were the ones who wanted the deals to avoid reliving their attack at trial. “But [Barry] wasn’t really at liberty to go into a lot of details because part of the case was still open,” Williams said, noting Knott didn’t receive her sentence until February. She was released from jail this week after serving the minimum of her fiveto 10-month sentence. PAGE 18 Williams followed