James (Babe) D'Anna

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  • RESI.DATE	1920
    RESI.Place	New Jersey
    death.Source.Comment	I will start with Babe. The rest of the family can add what they would like. He was actually 60. He was killed on June 18, 1970--it was the day after Father's Day.My Dad was a very good person -- the other brothers and sisters used to call him "the white sheep of the family". Many times throughout his lifetime he quietly helped people out(sometimes relative strangers) either emotionally by listening to their problems, financially, or physically (giving them rides, taking them food, etc.) He was also a very spiritual man and quietly religious -- (he and I would go to 6:30 daily mass for years). Although I no longer consider myself Catholic, spending that time with him was very special. On Father's Day that year, we wanted to give him a big dinner at my house. He was working at a liquor store for an older Italian woman in East Palo Alto who was having a very hard time keeping employees because it was a rough neighborhood. He was scheduled to work that night but he had traded with a friend that he had also gotten a job for there so he could attend the dinner. The next day, he would work. I remember watching him walk up to the door from the window that night--he looked physically better than I had ever seen him--full of life and I remember feeling how grateful I was that he was my Dad. The next night, the liquor store was held up and two men shot and killed him. The men were on drugs at the time--I think one of them was underage. They didn't get much of a sentence but they are both dead and have been for awhile--I think one was in a knife fight and I don't know how the other one died. It doesn't matter, I know that they probably suffered all their lives in one way or another. I take comfort thinking that the way my Dad lived he was probably ready to leave this earth at any given moment. But I have to say that none of us was ready for him to leave. He is still greatly missed by all of us. Nancy March 2005 One-Year Jail Sentence in Slaying of E.P.A. Clerk Several probation conditionswere imposed yesterday by Superior Judge Robert F. Kanefor Ralph A. Collins, 21, of EastPalo Alto, who pleaded guilty to second degree murder March 2 in the slaying of a liquor storeclerk during a holdup last June22. .Collins was sentenced to afive-year suspended state prison term and placed on probation for that length of time on condition that he spend one year in county jail. Probation conditions imposed by the court on recommendationof Probation Officer Raymond H. Faber are that Collins submit to clinical testing for narcoticsuse, that he submit tosearch, and seizure by police'and probation officers,, that he not possess any dangerousweapons, and that he submit to psychiatric treatment. Faber noted in his report on Collins that the defendant is a "very vicious, delinquently oriented young man who would stop at nothing, even murder, to gain his own ends."' The probation report note; that Collins has a crime recor dating -back to 1964, including burglary, attempted murder (he shot a man. three times as the result of an argument), possession of dangerous drugs, possession of stolen property and pettj theft. Collins was one of two mer indicted by the County Grand Jury as the result of the holdup in which James D'Anna, 59, a clerk at Charlie's Liquors, Eas Palo Alto, was shot and killed. The second defendant, Luthe Brock, 22. was acquitted by z Superior Court jury following a 12-day trial.