No arrests had been made as of Wednesday in connection with the death of a local woman outside an LGBT party earlier this month.
Alisha Moore, 27, was killed when a car driven by two women struck her and several other people standing outside Club Motivation, Eighth and Dauphin streets, around 4:30 a.m. Sept. 4.
The club, also known as The Breakfast Club, stages ballroom events every Friday.
Police spokesperson Sgt. Ray Evers said investigators are still waiting for toxicology reports and re-interviewing witnesses.
“This is definitely not on the backburner,” Evers said. “There is a lot of evidence and some things that will come out after the investigation is completed that will shine light on why this is taking a little longer. We don’t want to make a quick arrest and have some things come out through interviews and testimony that should have come out earlier. We want to make sure things are nice and tight, and then the chips will fall where they may at that point.”
The women in the car were reportedly prevented from entering the club, and a fight ensued before they allegedly drove the car into the crowd several times. Both were detained at the scene but later released.
The club’s owner, Kadella Davis, aka Mother Breakfast, who was injured in the incident, has hosted the event for several decades in locations throughout the city.
The city’s Department of Licenses & Inspections reported no violations against the establishment.
It is unclear whether the suspects were involved in the ballroom community, but Brian Green, executive director of The Safeguards Project, said he has noticed tensions building among members of different houses throughout the summer.
He said the problems often stem from “high-school stuff” that all teens experience, but it has led to numerous verbal and physical altercations on 13th Street in the past few months.
“It starts by someone saying something that’s taken as offensive, something about so-and-so having sex with someone else and then there’s talking behind their backs. The youth are interacting with each other across the house lines, so gossip spreads among people that aren’t in the group they hang out with,” Green explained, noting that the verbal and physical confrontations that follow are reflective of a larger pandemic. “Young people aren’t raised today with the lesson that you can’t put your hands on someone to settle a problem or disagreement. They’re quick to jump to a physical way of solving conflicts. That’s what they’re seeing in the society around them.”
Quincy Greene, executive director of the Educational Justice Coalition, which works to provide safe spaces for LGBT youth, said The Breakfast Club has exacerbated problems within the ballroom community, adding some blame needs to be put on the club’s owner.
“The parties typically go until 4 or 5 a.m., and there’s often a lot of underage youth there. Sometimes there’s alcohol present, and there’s just always a fight. The police have been called so many times,” he said. “This should be a wake-up call. [Mother Breakfast] needs to see that she is exploiting these youth by allowing their behavior to occur under her watch. A lot of times these kids come here because they know there’s going to be a fight and they want to see it, and then she benefits from it because she gets their money at the door.”
Brian Green said that while the idea of The Breakfast Club is commendable, the lack of supervision and oversight that often exists may be setting the teens up for trouble.
“There aren’t a lot of places they can go if they’re under 21 and hang out as a group and just be themselves, wear whatever they want and just be open and expressive about their sexuality and identities. It’s a place for them to be with their peers in a place with acceptance and tolerance,” he said. “But that acceptance and tolerance comes with a price because there are less demands put on them, less formal rules and less strictures, so they’re more likely to act up and not have consequences.”
Some of the youth with whom Greene works have vowed not to return to The Breakfast Club after this latest incident, but he said they are in the minority.
Greene noted that this month’s incident is reflective of ongoing trends in the ballroom community that receive little attention.
“These are symptoms of a larger issue, larger problems that are just now coming onto the radar for the police and the media,” Greene said. “Whenever this community is talked about, the violence part is always glossed over, the corruption gets glossed over, the tensions between the houses get glossed over, the HIV and STD risks these youth are taking gets glossed over. We need to be talking about this, and not just as community partners who want to further their own agendas, but as community members to get to the heart of why this is happening.”
The EJC is currently working on a proposal for funding for a study that would examine the social determinants of violence among Philadelphia’s LGBTQ residents, ages 16-30.
Greene anticipates the initiative will include a survey of up to 250 local LGBT youth and result in the possible creation of a Youth Violence Prevention Board.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].