Drexel University scientist Jasmine Y. Wright was dedicated to helping first responders who are assaulted while trying to help others.
Physical attacks on first responders are a felony in Pennsylvania. Yet justice, Philadelphia firefighters and medics have said, is hard-won. In 2015, Wright was leading a federally funded study to find out what was going wrong.
Then, in July, one month after receiving her master’s from the Dornsife School of Public Health, Wright, 27, was raped and murdered by a former maintenance man at her West Philadelphia apartment complex. He was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for life.
It would be more than a year before her colleagues could put aside their grief sufficiently to finish Wright’s work.