After the survivors of Powelton regrouped at 6221 Osage Avenue and resumed loudspeaker campaigns for their imprisoned family, the city of Philadelphia — now under Mayor Wilson Goode — moved to evict them on May 13, 1985. Police fired over ten thousand rounds into the row house, and when the occupants did not come out, a state police helicopter dropped a bomb made with C-4 and Tovex onto the roof. The fire it started was deliberately allowed to burn.
Eleven people died, including John Africa himself and five children; sixty-one homes in the Black working-class neighborhood burned to the ground. A city commission called the deaths "unconscionable" and found that the decision to bomb a house containing children was made with reckless disregard for life — yet no official was ever criminally charged. It remains the only aerial bombing of an American city by its own government.