When Aisha Stafford picked up her cell phone, the pediatrician sounded panicked.
"Whatever you're doing," he told her, "you have to stop." Take your son to the emergency room immediately, he insisted. Her son had a severe case of lead poisoning.
Stafford, a health aide, was working at a house in Germantown. She sped to her Brewerytown home, grabbed her 2 1/2-year-old son, Murad, and rushed him to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, crying the entire way.
"I was so scared," she would later say about that May phone call.
Her husband, Andrew Irby, was seething. For months, Irby and the
city's Department of Public Health had been after the landlord to fix the deteriorating lead paint in the 1920s-era house.
Murad and his twin brother, Jihad, moved into the house in March 2015. Eight months later, they tested high for lead. Now the amount in Murad's blood had skyrocketed to 46, nine times higher than the level that triggers medical alarms.
Irby dialed
Marvin Harrison, the NFL Hall of Fame receiver from North Philadelphia. Harrison, who at one point in his storied career landed a $67 million contract with the Indianapolis Colts, is president of a company that owns more than 80 properties in Philadelphia, including Irby's.
Irby couldn't understand why the landlord refused to spend a few thousand dollars needed to make the home safe for his twins. The boys can barely speak, which the couple blame on lead contamination.
"They don't have a two-word-sentence vocabulary," Stafford said. "They cry and we've got to figure out what they want and give it to them."
Andrew Irby got Marvin Harrison on the phone and told the Hall of Famer that one of his sons was in the emergency room, extremely sick from the chipping and peeling paint in the home on Ringgold Street.
Harrison, a former Roman Catholic High star, who used to be what Irby called one of his "favorite NFL legends," brushed him off, saying most houses in Philadelphia have lead in them, Irby said.
He blamed Harrison for making his kids sick and wanted him to do something immediately. The conversation turned heated, with both men swearing, Irby said.
Harrison did not return several phone calls or reply to messages from a reporter.
At St. Christopher's, doctors did tests on Murad but fortunately did not find chips of lead paint in his stomach nor was he anemic, which is associated with lead poisoning. Murad and Jihad were particularly vulnerable to lead hazards because they were born premature, each weighing 3½ pounds and exhibiting an anemia-related disorder called hemoglobin Bart's
Because Murad's lead level was so astronomical, at 46 — the highest the public health department had seen in years — the hospital alerted the city's Department of Human Services. A staffer there told Aisha Stafford that she had to find a safe place for both of her boys to live. Stafford took them from their $725-a-month, redbrick rowhouse on a slice of a street in Brewerytown and sent them to live with her sister in South Philadelphia. Both boys started to get speech therapy twice a week.
Stafford felt trapped, unable to come up with the two months' rent and security deposit typically required to lease a new place.
Harrison, 44, is president of Harrison Inc. and Morris-Harrison Inc., which together own 85 properties, including a sports bar, Playmakers, and Chuckie's Garage. Most of them are within 15 blocks of one another in Brewerytown. Some are renovated with new windows and gleaming hardwood floors. Some look aged and worn. Other properties are vacant lots, a few with rusted old cars.
Harrison is practically a king on these streets, where he grew up and never really left. This rough-and-tumble neighborhood, about eight blocks up a hill north of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has one of the highest rates of childhood lead poisoning in the city, 13 percent, an analysis of federal data shows. Just a little farther north is ground zero: Strawberry Mansion, where 21 percent of children tested had lead poisoning.
In January, four months before the emergency-room visit, a city health inspector found chipping lead paint and residue throughout the Ringgold Street house. The Health Department, which requires landlords to use certified workers to remove lead hazards, ordered Harrison to make the repairs within 30 days.
Inspectors flunked the house again for lead in late February.
In May, the Health Department nurse learned that Murad's blood-lead level had spiked to 46, sparking the ER visit. Jihad's was also extremely high, at 23.
Within a day, department staffers were at the home. Stafford told them that Harrison had sent over an uncertified worker who did repairs "incorrectly," according to a court record. "My child was still able to peel the paint off the window sill — it was horrible," she later said in an interview.
The Health Department did a "super clean" at the rental house to remove all lead chips and dust, and 12 days later had workers start to prime and paint all the unsafe surfaces.
When Harrison got word of the city's abatement work, he went to the Ringgold Street house to ask the workers what they were doing there, court records show. The next day, he told their supervisor he already had completed most of the repairs.
But "it wasn't to the city's liking," said Harrison's lawyer, David Denenberg. "We didn't ignore it."
But city inspectors still found lead, and completed the work. The city took Harrison and Harrison Inc. to Lead Court later that May.
It wasn't his first involvement in Lead Court. Years earlier, in a house about two blocks away on West College Avenue, a 1-year-old girl had tested high for lead. After the house failed a second inspection, the city took Morris-Harrison Inc. to court. The company made the repairs.
Harrison Inc. never filed the certification with the Health Department before he rented to Stafford and Irby in 2015, court records show.
In this case, the city did ask a Lead Court judge in October to hold Harrison personally accountable, not just Harrison Inc.
The city requested a judge to fine them $2,000 for every day that Harrison and Harrison Inc. had been in violation of the certification law
The city also asked that Harrison and Harrison Inc. be fined $300 a day for each day they had collected rent from Stafford and Irby while failing to comply with a February lead-abatement order.
Denenberg said his client is not responsible. "Marvin Harrison does not own the house. Harrison Inc. owns it."
Denenberg said that Harrison and Harrison Inc. are not one and the same and that Harrison did not sign Irby and Stafford's lease.
The city argued that Harrison Inc. is Marvin Harrison's "alter ego," and was formed to mask his ownership and insulate him from liability.
The city Health Department shelled out $2,297 to remove the lead hazards at the Ringgold Street home. The city asked a judge to make Harrison foot the bill. Denenberg said Harrison Inc. has offered to pay. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday
Only on this forum could people complain about the continuous Skip Bayless trolling gimmicks yet some of the same people still use the Harvin Marrison jokes from almost 5 years ago
