With their house in flames, MOVE members repeatedly tried to exit but were met with police gunfire which killed some of the adults and children in the alley behind the house.

Mayor Goode later claimed he had ordered that MOVE children be taken into custody in the few days before the assault whenever they were seen away from the house. Investigations revealed that the very morning of May 12th when a known MOVE vehicle carrying children attempted to drive down Osage Avenue, police pulled aside the barricade to let it through.

The bombing of Osage Avenue became international news overnight. Media reports the next day indicated that a gunfight continued in the alley behind the house after the bomb was dropped, but the story soon changed. At a press conference, Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor, who was himself in the vicinity of the al-ley, initially confirmed that police had fired at this time, but after conferring with aides, corrected himself to say they did not. Several months later, investigators questioned all the officers involved. When police sharpshooter William Stewart mentioned stake-out officers firing their Uzi's in the alley around 7:30 pm, his attorney quickly stopped the interview to confer with him privately. Several firemen testified that they heard automatic gunfire in the evening. A bolt-action rifle, two shotguns, and two revolvers were the only weapons found in the ashes of the MOVE house – no automatic weapons.

Philadelphia police had finally outdone themselves in depravity, making it all the more difficult for their partners in crime, the Medical Examiner's Office, to cover for them, as was done in both the August 8, 1978 case and Mumia Abu-Jamal's case in 1981. Medical Examiner personnel made a deliberately late arrival on the scene, after a crane had scooped through the debris, obliterating the exact recovery positions. The bodies were then left unrefrigerated, and examination of blood specimens and lung tissue was delayed long enough to make test results inconclusive as to the cause of death. On the basis of the May 13th mishandling, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office later had their certification revoked.