Only two people escaped the Osage Avenue fire alive: thirteen-year-old Birdie Africa and Ramona Africa, who ran from the burning house through police gunfire with burns across her body. The city's answer to the massacre was to prosecute her — the sole surviving adult — for riot and conspiracy. Convicted in 1986, she served seven years, held past her minimum each year because she refused to disassociate from MOVE.
Released in 1992, Ramona Africa became the organization's most visible voice, touring the world for the MOVE 9 and Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 1996 a federal civil jury found the city and its top officers liable for the 1985 assault, awarding her and relatives of the dead $1.5 million — civil liability for an atrocity that produced no criminal charge against any official, while its survivor served seven years.