News Journal archives, April 13-19: Attorney kills family, minimum wage $5.65
Ben Mace"Pages of history" features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Every Evening.
April 13, 1985, The News Journal
Wilmington attorney killed family then committed suicide
Relatives, friends and law associates of Wilmington attorney Philip Bradford Beardsley – who killed his wife and two children before taking his own life at their Wilmington home – are reeling from the discovery Thursday night of the suicide and slayings.
Beardsley, 37, his wife, Tamlyn, 33, and their two sons, Talbot, 6, and Pearson, 2, were found shot to death just after 9 p.m. Thursday in their home on Rockland Road, just west of the Du Pont Country Club grounds.
Many of Beardsley’s friends, former neighbors and associates said he apparently was in desperate financial circumstances and suffering from depression and alcohol-related problems.
State Medical Examiner Ali Z. Hameli said after preliminary completion of the autopsies Friday that Beardsley, his wife, who was possibly assaulted with a baseball bat, and their sons all died from 12-gauge shotgun wounds to the head.
Hameli classified the deaths of Tamlyn, Talbot and Pearson Beardsley as homicides. Philip Beardsley’s shotgun wound was classified as self-inflicted.
State Attorney General Charles M. Oberly III, who visited the gruesome death scene Thursday night, said he was emotionally upset by what he saw….
“Beardsley and his wife were [found] in a first-floor bedroom,” Oberly said. “There was a [bloody] baseball bat and a shotgun on the floor near their bodies.”
Oberly said Beardsley, whom he knew only “to say hello to him,” left a suicide note.
“I did not want to read it,” Oberly said. “But an officer read a line from it that said, ‘We will all be better off.’”
April 14, 1999, The News Journal
Carper approves minimum-wage increase to $5.65
James S. Neri of Marydel, who works two jobs to support his family of four, will be among 10,000 workers in Delaware getting a raise May 1.
That’s when the state’s minimum wage goes from $5.15 to $5.65 an hour under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Tom Carper. A second increase to $6.15 an hour is scheduled for Oct. 1, 2000.
“The raise will help a little bit,” said Neri, who works part time, 32 hours cleaning cars at Soft-Touch Car Wash in Dover for minimum wage. He also works full time at Steelworks, a Dover filing cabinet manufacturer, at a wage of more than $9 an hour.
His wife also works two jobs.
It takes all they bring home, about $1,400 a month in net income, to support the family, Neri said.
The minimum wage is often thought to be a wage normally paid to teens entering the work force. Neri, 33, is more typical. Department of Labor statistics show 85% of minimum-wage earners are adults….
April 17, 2005, The News Journal
Lacking money, DelDOT slashes projects
More than $200 million in road improvement projects, mostly in New Castle County, have been slashed because there is not enough money in next year’s budget to start the work, transportation officials said.
Money for projects…has been reduced, eliminated or delayed under the Delaware Department of Transportation’s proposed budget for fiscal 2006, which begins July 1.
Projects that were affected include:
- I-95/U.S. 202 interchange – all funding removed to expand northbound off-ramp from one lane to two
- Del. 1 – funding reduced from $9 million to $1 million for repaving from Tybouts Corner to Del. 273
- Churchmans Crossing – funding reduced from $6.4 million to $1 million for a Churchmans Road extension study and improvements to the intersections of Capitol Trail and Harmony Road, and Del. 4 and Del. 7
- Wilmington Riverfront – funding for improvements reduced from $13.6 million to $5.6 million
- Marsh Road, Foulk Road and Washington Street Extension – all funding removed for bicycle and pedestrian improvement study
- Pomeroy Trail – funding reduced from $5 million to $1.8 million for a bike path connecting Newark to Pennsylvania.
- Transit vehicle replacement – funding reduced from $26 million to $6 million, delaying the purchase of 68 buses
- Rail improvements for the Newark to Wilmington R-2 line – funding reduced from $6 million to $2 million
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.