Peace Corps volunteer killed: The 37-year-old woman from Delco was found stabbed in Gabon. Police have arrested two men.
Peace Corps volunteer killed: The 37-year-old woman from Delco was found stabbed in Gabon. Police have arrested two men.
By Andrew Rice
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF, De. 18, 1998
A Delaware County woman serving as a Peace Corps volunteer was found stabbed to death early yesterday near her home in the West African nation of Gabon, the agency reported. Karen M. Phillips, 37, who joined the Peace Corps this year after a career in marketing and fund-raising, had been living in Gabon since April and helping farmers market their produce, the agency said. Her body was found in tall grass near her house. Police in Oyem, Gabon, arrested two men in the slaying, Peace Corps spokesman Brendan Daly said. Daly said he did not know if they had been formally charged. Little information was available about the circumstances of Phillips' death. Daly said Peace Corps staff in Gabon did not know the motive, but he
said it appeared to be "an individual case" and not politically motivated or an act of terrorism.
Phillips was a native of Delaware County who attended Padua Academy, a girls' school in Wilmington. She earned an undergraduate degree in accounting from Villanova University in 1982, and a master's in business administration from Fordham
University in 1989. After stints in marketing at Chemical Bank and the investment banking firm Lazard Freres & Co., both in
New York, she moved to Atlanta, where she worked for five years as a fund-raiser for CARE, the international relief organization. It was there that she became interested in "working firsthand" with people in the Third World, said one of her two brothers, Carl, an electrician.
Phillips went to Gabon for orientation in April and was sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer in June. "She loved it," Carl Phillips said last night. He said she was making use of her knowledge of French in Gabon, a former French colony, and had told her family recently that a Gabonese farmer had gone away for a few weeks and entrusted her with running his farm. Her parents, Anna Phillips of Media and Richard Phillips of Twin Oaks, are devastated, her brother said. "They're just trying to understand why," Carl Phillips said, "with her there trying to help and all. They didn't like the idea of her being there, but that was what she chose to do. That was her." He said she sent pictures home of herself playing guitar with children in the village where she lived.
In a news release, Peace Corps director Mark Gearan said the agency was "outraged and deeply saddened" by Phillips' death. "She embodied the highest ideals of the Peace Corps and was an outstanding volunteer." There are about 80 Peace Corps volunteers in Gabon, a nation of 1.2 million on the West African coast. Phillips is the fourth Peace Corps volunteer to have
been murdered this year, Daly said. Two killings, in Ukraine and the Ivory Coast, stemmed from robbery attempts, he said. A third volunteer, stationed in the Philippines, was the victim of a random drive-by shooting. "This is a very unusual year for us," Daly said. Only one other volunteer had been killed in the last seven years, he said. The agency has 6,500 volunteers
stationed in 80 countries worldwide. Phillips' body will be flown back to the United States over the weekend, Daly said, and funeral arrangements are pending. Besides her brother and her parents, Phillips is survived by her mother, Anna Phillips, of Media; her father, Richard Phillips, of Twin Oaks, Delaware County, and two brothers.
©1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
