Officer dies after jumping from boat An incident on the Massachusetts River claimed the life of Charles Panek
By John Collins
Lowell Sun
TYNGSBORO, Mass. — Only a river as mighty as the Merrimack could have taken the life of such a “fearless and fit” warrior as Lowell police Officer Charles “PJ” Panek, said his parents, brother and friends.
Yet Panek’s parents, Sandra and Charles of Pelham, also said yesterday they are mystified how their physically fit, 30-year-old son — an expert swimmer who had successfully parachuted into the ocean in National Guard paratrooper training only two weeks earlier — somehow drowned so quickly, and mid-river, where the current reportedly was not strong.
The off-duty Panek was enjoying a motorboat ride on the river Saturday night with his younger brother, Tom, and a friend when he told them he was diving into the water for a swim to cool off, Tyngsboro police said.
Panek jumped into the water from the 18-foot boat as it was traveling at about 20 mph, and when his brother and friend circled back around “seconds later” to pick him up, Charlie did not resurface, they later told police.
“Witnesses who were watching this boat from the shoreline confirmed the account of the occupants,” Tyngsboro police Capt. Richard Howe wrote in a press release. “They reported observing a person jump from the boat into the water and fail to resurface.”
A 911 call, placed at 8:43 p.m., launched a massive search effort that police based at Riverfront Park, site of the former Tyngsboro Campground. The search involved dive teams from the Lowell fire and police departments, Nashua police, Massachusetts State Police and a state police helicopter crew using an infrared camera.
Three hours later, at 11:41, police divers located and pulled their fellow officer’s body from the water 300 feet offshore, where the river’s depth is 14 feet, Howe reported.
Panek was pronounced dead at the scene. He was not publicly identified by Howe until yesterday morning after family members were notified.
The incident remains under investigation by Tyngsboro and state police, Howe said.
Medal of Valor recipient
A Lowell officer since 2006, Panek was a patrolman assigned to the city’s west side on the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift.
In 2008, he received the Medal of Valor from the Lowell Police Department for his heroic actions in an incident outside Santoro’s Sub Shop in which he tackled, disarmed and arrested an armed man without using deadly force, though police say it would have been justified.
Four months later, Panek made a similarly remarkable arrest of a violent suspect, Jorge Huertas, outside the same sub shop after a relentless pursuit. Huertas was a head taller and 80 pounds heavier than the 5-foot-10-inch, 160-pound Panek, who previously boxed as a welterweight in Lowell’s Golden Gloves, took Brazilian jujitsu classes and was a competitive long-distance runner.
Three times, Panek ran after and caught Huertas, but the suspect was able to escape each time, once after Huertas allegedly slammed the officer into a light post.
Catching up with Huertas a fourth time, Panek, nicknamed “PJ” by his family, used a chemical spray to subdue and arrest the suspect.
“PJ took risks in life and as a police officer,” said his father, also named Charles. “He was never one to turn his head. He really took his job seriously. He saw himself as a protector of people. And he wasn’t afraid to be proactive.”
That protective instinct showed itself early on, according to Justin Rosamilio, his best friend since childhood. Once, when the two were in their early teens and attending a concert, Panek saw a woman fall down injured and, without hesitation, picked her up and rushed her to the emergency tent on the concert grounds.
“He always had a helping nature about him,” Rosamilio said.
During his college years, before Panek earned his master’s degree in criminal justice at UMass Lowell, there came a fork in his life’s path where he had to decide whether he could help more people and find more reward as a policeman or a lawyer, his mother said.
“PJ came to me one day and said he’d been offered a scholarship to attend Suffolk Law School, but he didn’t know what choice to make — lawyer or police officer,” Sandra Panek said yesterday, verging on tears at the memory of what she told her son that day. “‘Follow your heart,’ I told him. He gave up the scholarship to become a police officer. He knew what he wanted.”
‘No rhyme or reason’
In the front hallway of his modest childhood home, Panek’s parents have long proudly hung their son’s Lowell police portrait and his Medal of Valor, along with the police and city proclamations and related Sun article, inside a large frame.
“You have demonstrated courage beyond the call of duty, dedication to duty, and true professionalism,” reads the certificate signed by City Manager Bernie Lynch. “Your actions on Aug. 2 (2008) exemplify the ideals of the Medal of Valor, and public service itself. The citizens of Lowell are proud and honored by your service.”
Before becoming a Lowell policeman, Panek was an honorably discharged Marine. As a current member of the Rhode Island Army National Guard, he twice volunteered for duty assignments in the Middle East.
From 2007 to 2008, he served undercover in Iraq in the U.S. military’s Strategic Counterintelligence Division. He grew a beard and wore clothing to fit in with Iraqi locals, according to a fellow Marine who was at the family home yesterday and who served with Panek in Iraq.
“His job was to seek out al-Qaida (operatives) in the local population,” Sandra Panek said. “It was a very dangerous position.”
The second time Panek volunteered to deploy with his National Guard unit to the Middle East was this year, his Marine buddy said; he was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in November.
After all the dangerous places and situations Panek lived through — and considering his high level of physical fitness and expert swimming skills — the irony of his death happening in the apparently calm center of the Merrimack River on a still summer night isn’t lost on his family and friends.
“Jumping off a slow-moving boat into the river to cool off …” Sandra Panek said, shaking her head. “To think he didn’t survive that. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
‘Always in motion’
A steady stream of Panek’s police and military colleagues, childhood and neighborhood friends and schoolmates from Pelham High, where Panek graduated with the Class of 1999, and UMass Lowell gathered yesterday at the family home in Pelham to grieve the loss and to celebrate an even greater life and personality, by all accounts.
Panek was an Eagle Scout, a lifelong motorcycle enthusiast, a hunter who bagged a moose at age 15 with his father, a boxer trained by Art Ramalho, and an expert marksman who won awards with the Marines, his father said.
Panek, a bachelor, also traveled extensively aside from his military assignments, vacationing in Brazil, the Caribbean, Hawaii, southern California and Florida.
“There was no such thing as down time or inactivity,” his father said. “He was always in motion, always doing something.”
Panek also enjoyed building cars and Harley-Davidson motorcycles from the frame up.
“Right now, there’s a (vintage) Jeep in back of the house that he’d started work on restoring,” Charles Panek said. “Guess I’ll be finishing that one now.”
“He probably did more in 30 years than most people do in their lifetimes,” Sandra Panek said. “He jammed it all in.”
Sandra said the trait she’ll remember most fondly in her son was his ability to make everyone laugh.
“He loved to make a good time. There could be just three people, and he’d make it a party,” his mother said.
Tellingly, their son’s favorite holiday was “all birthdays,” Sandra Panek said. “He’d stretch out his own birthday (June 8) for a whole week.”
As a mom, of course, Sandra would have preferred that PJ cut back on his many risk-taking activities, as she told her son more than once.
“And he’d always say to me, ‘Ma, what do you want me to do, take up crocheting?’ That was his favorite line,” said Sandra Panek, her son’s words making her laugh again, one more time, through the pain.
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2 Dead after Bomb Tears Through Government HQ in Oslo
Yet another reason we all need to be careful of those posing as Law Enforcement and when we learn of an individual such as Sgt. Tom Hanna who’s real name is Thomas Hannaway posing as a SSgt for the RCMP we need to spread the news and information.
Updated at 4:08 p.m. PDT
OSLO, Norway — Norway’s peace was shattered twice Friday when a bomb ripped open buildings in the heart of its government and a man dressed as a police officer gunned down youths at a summer camp. Police linked one Norwegian to both attacks, which killed a total of at least 16 people in this nation’s worst violence since World War II.
Police said they did not know the motive or whether the attacks were the work of one person or a terrorist group, but Justice Minister Knut Storberget said the man who opened fire at the youth camp is Norwegian.
Hundreds of youths ran in terror at a camp on Utoya island where the prime minister had been scheduled to speak Saturday. Some even tried swimming to safety as the gunman fired.
A 15-year-old camper named Elise said she heard gunshots, but then saw a police officer and thought she was safe. Then he started shooting people right before her eyes.
“I saw many dead people,” said Elise, whose father, Vidar Myhre, didn’t want her to disclose her last name. “He first shot people on the island. Afterward he started shooting people in the water.”
Elise said she hid behind the same rock that the killer was standing on. “I could hear his breathing from the top of the rock,” she said.
She said it was impossible to say how many minutes passed while she was waiting for him to stop.
The shooting occurred after the bombing in Oslo, Norway’s capital and the city where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. The blast left a square covered in twisted metal, shattered glass and documents expelled from surrounding buildings in a dust-fogged scene that reminded one visitor from New York of Sept. 11.
Ian Dutton, who was in a nearby hotel, said people “just covered in rubble” were walking through “a fog of debris.”
“It wasn’t any sort of a panic,” he said, “It was really just people in disbelief and shock, especially in a such as safe and open country as Norway. You don’t even think something like that is possible.”
Police said seven people died in the Oslo blast, and another 9 or 10 people were killed at the camp, which was organized by the youth wing of the ruling Labor Party. Rescuers were to search to blast wreckage through the night for more victims, and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said police fear there could be more victims at the camp as well.
Elise, the young camper, said she believes she saw more than 10 people killed.
Acting national Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim said a man was arrested in the shooting, and the suspect had been observed in Oslo before the explosion there. Police did not immediately say how much time elapsed between the bombing and the attack at Utoya, about 20 miles (35 kilometers) northwest, but reports of the shooting began appearing on Twitter about two and a half hours after the bombing.
Sponheim said the camp shooter “wore a sweater with a police sign on it. I can confirm that he wasn’t a police employee and never has been.”
Aerial images broadcast by Norway’s TV2 showed members of a SWAT team dressed in black arriving at the island in boats and running up the dock. Behind them, people who stripped down to their underwear swam away from the island toward shore, some using flotation devices.
Sponheim said police were still trying to get an overview of the camp shooting and could not say whether there was more than one shooter. He said several people were injured but he could not comment on their conditions.
In Oslo, most of the windows in the 20-floor high-rise where Stoltenberg and his administration work were shattered. Other buildings damaged house government offices and the headquarters of some of Norway’s leading newspapers. and that rescuers were to search damaged buildings through the night for more victims.
Oslo University Hospital said 12 people were admitted for treatment following the Utoya shooting, and 11 people were taken there from the explosion in Oslo. The hospital asked people to donate blood.
Stoltenberg, who was home when the blast occurred and was not harmed, decried he called “a cowardly attack on young innocent civilians.”
“I have message to those who attacked us,” he said. “It’s a message from all of Norway: You will not destroy our democracy and our commitment to a better world.”
Sponheim would not give any details about the identity or nationality of the suspect, who was being interrogated by police.
Stoltenberg said “we don’t want to speculate” on whether a terror group is responsible, and said some groups may take responsibility “to appear to be more important than they are.”
The attacks formed the deadliest day of terror in Western Europe since the 2005 London bombings, which killed 52 people.
Police said the Oslo explosion occurred at 3:30 p.m. (1330 GMT) and was caused by “one or more” bombs, but declined to speculate on who was behind the attack. They later sealed off the nearby offices of broadcaster TV 2 after discovering a suspicious package.
Public broadcaster NRK showed video of a blackened car lying on its side amid the debris. An AP reporter who was in the office of Norwegian news agency NTB said the building shook from the blast and all employees were evacuated. Down in the street, he saw one person with a bleeding leg being led away from the area.
An AP reporter headed to Utoya was turned away by police before reaching the lake that surrounds the island, as eight ambulances with sirens blaring entered the area. Police blocked off roads leading to the lake.
Emilie Bersaas, identified by Sky News television as one of the youths on the island, said she ran inside a school building and hid under a bed when the shooting started.
“At one point the shooting was very, very close (to) the building, I think actually it actually hit the building one time, and the people in the next room screamed very loud,” she said.
“I laid under the bed for two hours and then the police smashed a window and came in,” Bersaas said. “It seems kind of unreal, especially in Norway. This is not something that could happen here.”
One of the youths at the camp, Niclas Tokerud, stayed in touch with his sister through the attack through text messages.
“He sent me a text saying ‘there’s been gunshots. I am scared (expletive). But I am hiding and safe. I love you,’” said Nadia Tokerud, a 25-year-old graphic designer in Hokksund, Norway.
As he boarded a boat from the island after the danger had passed he sent one more text: “I’m safe.”
The United States, European Union, NATO and the U.K., all quickly condemned the bombing, which Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague called “horrific” and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen deemed a “heinous act.”
“It’s a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring,” President Barack Obama said.
Obama extended his condolences to Norway’s people and offered U.S. assistance with the investigation. He said he remembered how warmly Norwegians treated him in Oslo when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
Nobel Peace Prize Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said it appeared the camp attack “was intended to hurt young citizens who actively engage in our democratic and political society. But we must not be intimidated. We need to work for freedom and democracy every day.”
Although police would not speculate on who was responsible for Friday’s attack or whether international groups were involved, Norway has been grappling with a homegrown terror plot linked to al-Qaida. Two suspects are in jail awaiting charges.
Last week, a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he is deported from the Scandinavian country. The indictment centered on statements that Mullah Krekar — the founder of the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam — made to various news media, including American network NBC.
Terrorism has also been a concern in neighboring Denmark since an uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad six years ago. Danish authorities say they have foiled several terror plots linked to the 2005 newspaper cartoons that triggered protests in Muslim countries. Last month, a Danish appeals court on Wednesday sentenced a Somali man to 10 years in prison for breaking into the home of the cartoonist.
Scandinavian countries have focused on anti-terrorism tactics that frustrate countries like the U.S. that are more aggressive about making arrests. Scandinavian authorities fight terrorism by disrupting plots, sometimes telling suspects they know what they’re up to, and warning them of the consequences.
Terror convictions are also difficult to get because of skepticism in Scandinavian courts toward cases built on intent — as most terrorism trials are — and a demand for more evidence than in the U.S. and many other places.
Al-Qaida has promised attacks on Norway for years. The terror network’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri threatened the country in 2004 over its involvement in the U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan and strategist Abu Yahya al-Libi made similar threats in 2006, the same year the Norwegian Embassy was attacked in Syria.
Norway’s support of NATO’s mission in Libya also earned it enemies, said Bob Ayers, a former U.S. intelligence officer.
“Norwegians are in Afghanistan. They’re in Tripoli. They reprinted the cartoons,” Ayers said.
Many intelligence analysts said they had never heard of Helpers of Global Jihad, which took initial credit. Ansar al-Islam also took credit on some jihadist web sites.
Whoever was responsibe, Ayers said it appeared more than one person was involved.
Asked at a press conference in Tripoli about Libya’s reaction to the events in Oslo, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said, “We never support any acts of terrorism whatsoever.”
But he suggested NATO’s policies could have prompted the attack, saying, “NATO is planting terrorism in the hearts of many. This is unfortunate and sad.”
Europe has been the target of numerous terror plots by Islamist militants. The deadliest was the 2004 Madrid train bombings, when shrapnel-filled bombs exploded, killing 191 people and wounding about 1,800. A year later, suicide bombers killed 52 rush-hour commuters in London aboard three subway trains and a bus. And in 2006, U.S. and British intelligence officials thwarted one of the largest plots yet — a plan to explode nearly a dozen trans-Atlantic airliners.
In October, the U.S. State Department advised American citizens living or traveling in Europe to take more precautions following reports that terrorists may be plotting attacks on a European city. Some countries went on heightened alert after the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden.
Intelligence analysts said they doubted the attack was linked to bin Laden’s death.
“Al-Qaida would have targeted something closer to U.S. interests if it was related to bin Laden,” Ayers said.
___
Associated Press reporters Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Matthew Lee and Rita Foley in Washington, Paisley Dodds in London, Bjoern H. Amland in Hoenefoss, Norway, and Paul Schemm in Tripoli, Libya, contributed to this report.
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Fallen Indiana Police Officer’s Wife Was Dispatching During Fatal Shooting
July 13, 2011
Story by theindychannel.com
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. –
The wife of a Terre Haute police officer killed in the line of duty Monday was one of those dispatching emergency crews to the scene of the fatal shooting.
State police confirmed Tuesday night that Danielle Long, the widow of Officer Brent Long and a Vigo County dispatcher, was sending crews for Terre Haute police the afternoon her husband was shot while serving a warrant.
Long and a team of U.S. marshals and ISP had gone to a home at 1812 N. 8th St. to serve an arrest warrant on Shaun Seeley, 33, of Terre Haute, who has a lengthy criminal background and had been released from prison in February 2010 on a cocaine charge.
Police said Seeley opened fire on Long within seconds of the officer entering the home, striking him twice in the head. He later died at an area hospital.
Police said they are not sure if a shot fired from Long’s gun struck Seeley, who also died in the exchange of gunfire. He was struck several times in the torso and once in the head.
On Tuesday night, fellow officers, city leaders and community members lined the streets of Terre Haute as Long’s body was taken to an area funeral home.
Officials said Long, a six-year veteran of the department, is survived by his wife, their 11-year-old daughter and 10-month-old son.
“Officer Long was the kind of policeman every policeman wants to be, but few us are,” said Terre Haute police Lt. Jeffrey Milner.
“He’ll be missed terribly,” said Seelyville Town Marshall Jason Parker. “There will never be another like him.”
Financial donations to Long’s family can be made any First Financial Bank location.
Long’s K-9, Shadow, was also wounded and was taken to a veterinary hospital in critical condition. He will have surgery to remove a bullet in his head. If he is unable to return to the force, he will be given to the family as a pet, police said.
Those wishing to support Shadow may mail or make donations to the Terre Haute Police Department K-9 program, which will then be donated to the Vohne Liche Kennels in Long’s memory.
Copyright 2011 by TheIndyChannel.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Cleveland Police Recruits Hired, Fired in Same Day
June 27, 2011
Recruits who graduated from the Cleveland Police Academy on Friday quickly found themselves unemployed, according to The Plain Dealer.
The 42 new officers were laid off following the ceremony and were set to be cut from their $10.50-an-hour cadet positions at the end of last month, but the city kept them on until their took their oaths.
Appointment to active duty preserves the new officers’ certification for four years and gives the city more time to recall them.
It could take about a year and a half for the officers to be recalled if the city fills the jobs only when officers retire or resign, police union president Steve Loomis told the newspaper.
Patrolman James Swope spoke for the class during the graduation and wouldn’t talk to the newspaper about the layoffs but said that he was eager to be called back to duty.
“I’m very happy,” he said. “It’s been a goal of mine my entire life.”
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Baltimore Officer Released From Hospital
June 27, 2011
Story by wbaltv.com
BALTIMORE –
A 27-year-old city police officer seriously injured in a car accident last week has been released from Shock Trauma.
The Baltimore City Police Department said Officer Teresa Rigby was released from the hospital and is continuing to get medical treatment at a rehab facility.
Rigby went over the jersey wall on Interstate 83 last week while helping a disabled motorist. She landed on pavement about 25 feet below the bridge.
Rigby had rods put in her legs, and she went through facial reconstruction surgery and suffered a fractured pelvis, according to police.
Police are in the process of setting up a foundation to help Rigby.
Copyright 2011 by WBALTV.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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SON KILLED IN LINE OF DUTY ‘Mr. P’ Hangs Up His Police Badge
By Ryan E. Little
THE LEDGER
Published: Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 11:58 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 11:58 p.m.
WINTER HAVEN | A man who became a Winter Haven police officer after his son was shot and killed in the line of duty, retired from the Winter Haven Police Department on Thursday.
Johnnie Patterson Sr., 61, joined the Police Department in 1999, two years after his son, Johnnie Patterson Jr., was shot and killed in pursuit of Walter Steven Norris after a traffic stop in southwest Winter Haven.
Johnnie Patterson Sr. was with his son on a police ride-along when the killing took place in the early-morning hours of March 8, 1997.
Thursday, he was celebrated for 12 years of service that earned him the respect of fellow officers and a relationship with a community that will miss “Mr. P’s” service.
“He’s been an icon in town,” said Winter Haven Police Chief Gary Hester. “He got a very late start in his career, but he has done a great job; very customer-orientated.”
Lt. Brian Liberman, Patterson’s squad leader, said, “He prides himself on staying in touch with the residents of the community he serves … They call and ask for him in (southeast Winter Haven) and would be upset to see him not working out there.”
Patterson was admitted to the criminal justice training program at Polk Community College, now Polk State College, in April 1997 at the age of 49. He had been working as a truck driver after ending a 23-year Army career in 1992.
At the time, he told The Ledger he wasn’t a father out for revenge. Rather, his son had urged him to try a career in law enforcement.
“This is something we’ve been talking about for some time,” Patterson told The Ledger in 1997. “I know he would be proud. He kept insisting I do it, but I kept putting it off. I just couldn’t put it off any longer.”
Patterson’s family, Winter Haven City Commisioners Nat Birdsong and J.P. Powell, and about 100 Winter Haven police officers watched as Hester presented Patterson with a commemorative display case containing his badge and Winter Haven police patches.
“It was an accomplishment that I wanted to happen,” Patterson said. “I’ve enjoyed the citizens of Winter Haven and the staff here at the Winter Haven Police Department, which to me, is one of the best agencies in the state.”
Patterson also received a plaque from his squad, as well as a remote control police car, complete with lights and sirens, from one of his granddaughters.
Norris, who admitted to Polk County Sheriff’s deputies shortly after being apprehended on March 9, 1997 that he had shot Johnnie Patterson Jr., is still serving a life sentence in the Okeechobee Correctional Institution.
Norris said he shot the younger Patterson twice following several scuffles in a relentless chase through a southwest Winter Haven neighborhood that started after the younger Patterson had pulled over a 1993 Chevrolet Cavalier being driven by Mary Patterson, who is not related to the officers.
Norris said he was high on methamphetamine and hadn’t slept for three days when he and Mary Patterson were pulled over.
When Johnnie Patterson Jr. asked for Norris’s name, Norris gave his brother’s name, Keith Norris, who had an arrest warrant issued in Hillsborough County.
Johnnie Patterson Jr. ordered Norris out of the car, but before he could get Norris in handcuffs, Norris was able to struggle free and ran south.
Johnnie Patterson Jr. and Norris struggled three times in the quarter-mile chase before Norris fired two shots at the officer, one hitting him under his right eye.
The shooting left an empty seat at Patterson holiday dinners, led to Winter Haven police policy changes that made work safer for patrol officers and creation of the Polk State Johnnie Patterson Jr. Scholarships for students who have lost loved ones in the line of duty.
But also for Winter Haven, it led to “Mr. P’s” 12 years of service.
“Him and his family have certainly given a lot to this community,” Hester said.
“With his son, Johnnie, who served here and was tragically murdered, Mr. P stepped up and has served the community well. This family has literally given everything to this community.”
[ Ryan Little can be reached at ryan.little@theledger.com or 863-401-6962. ]
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Washington Trooper Trapped in Cruiser Crash
June 23, 2011
kirotv.com Webstaff
CATHCART, Washington –
A Washington State Patrol trooper was seriously injured in a collision on State Route 9 in the Cathcart area Tuesday afternoon.
The 41-year-old trooper, identified by the Washington State Patrol as Lance Ramsay of Snohomish, was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with a head laceration and other injuries after he collided with a van shortly after 4:00 p.m.
Chopper 7 filmed images of a badly damaged motorcycle with emergency lights and a red KIA minivan at the scene.
All lanes of Highway 9 near 172nd in Clearview were blocked while officials investigated the incident.
According to Washington State Patrol Trooper Keith Leary, the driver of the mini-van was attempting to turn left from Highway 9 on the 172nd St SE when Ramsay collided with the rear of the van.
The occupants of the van, the 20-year-old male driver, a 7-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy, were not injured in the crash.
The State Patrol is still investigating the cause of the collision.
Highway 9 was re-opened shortly before 7:00 p.m.
Copyright 2011 by KIROTV.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Baltimore Officer injured in fall undergoes surgery
Baltimore Officer Undergoes Surgery After Fall
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Liz F. Kay, Julie Baughman and Justin Fenton
Baltimore Police Officer Teresa Rigby remained in critical condition at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center Wednesday after falling from an elevated section of Interstate 83 near the Pepsi plant, hospital and police officials said.
Rigby underwent surgery hours after Tuesday’s accident, said hospital spokeswoman Cindy Rivers.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the officer has another surgery scheduled Wednesday. He said doctors put a rod in her leg and she was undergoing facial reconstruction and had a fractured pelvis.
“She has an incredibly long road ahead of her,” the spokesman said. “It’s very unclear how long she’ll be in the hospital.”
The 27-year-old officer had been standing near a disabled vehicle Tuesday morning when a Saab rammed the back of her cruiser. Police had not initially known whether the officer jumped to avoid being struck by her own car, or had been struck.
Police said a news conference Wednesday that she did not jump off the bridge intentionally, but rather had been knocked off the bridge and landed on a concrete parking lot, a drop of 25 to 30 feet.
City police declined to release the names of others involved in the accident — the drivers of the Saab, the tow truck and the disabled vehicle — citing the pending investigation by the police accident team and the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office.
Rivers, the Shock Trauma spokeswoman, said that the driver of the Saab was treated and released Tuesday afternoon. Alcohol did not seem to be a factor in the crash, Guglielmi said, though he could not say whether the driver was distracted by a cellphone or perhaps the patrol car’s flashing lights.
“It’s been documented that when there is an accident on the road, people get attracted by the flashing lights,” he said. “When they do that, they sometimes steer into that scene, and that is how tragedies happen.”
Rigby lives in Baltimore County, just over the city line near Northwest Baltimore’s Seton Business Park. A small sign on her modest, two-story home’s door reads, “Firefighters, Save our Pets!”
Rigby’s next door neighbor, Keisha Henry, called Rigby a pleasant neighbor and said she was often outside walking her two dogs.
“She is a really, really nice person,” Henry said. “She always had a smile on her face.”
Henry said that Rigby mostly kept to herself and that she had not been living in the house long. Henry said she was shocked about the accident and is “praying for her and her family.”
Another neighbor, Willie Fulton, shared her concern and said, “She’s a good neighbor … I hope she makes out alright.”
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Trial for the man accused of killing three Pittsburgh Police Officers begins
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
PITTSBURGH — Richard Poplawski, 24, is on trial for the shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh police officers who responded to a domestic dispute at his Stanton Heights home on the morning of April 4, 2009.
Officers Eric G. Kelly, 41, Stephen J. Mayhle, 29, and Paul J. Sciullo II, 36, died in the shootout. If the jury brought in from Dauphin County convicts Poplawski of at least one count of first-degree murder, it will decide whether he gets the death penalty.
Tribune-Review staff writers Bobby Kerlik and Bob Bauder are providing updates from the Allegheny County Courthouse throughout the trial.
4 p.m.
Eric Kelly was thinking of his family as he lay wounded in front of the Poplawski house, a Pittsburgh police officer told the jury.
“Tell my wife and kids I love them,” Kelly told Officer Timothy McManaway, a colleague from the Zone 5 police station in Highland Park. “I said, “You’re going to have to tell them yourself. You’re going to have to get through this.”
From the house, McManaway said, someone was shooting rapid-fire with a rifle. At one point rounds “chewed up the front part of the vehicle.”
McManaway knew Kelly was hurt bad. He said Kelly was sprawled across a curb, bleeding badly from a leg.
“I tried to get him to fight and be angry,” McManaway said, crying on the witness stand. “I knew he lost a lot of blood and was going into shock.”
McManaway was able to pull Kelly off the curb so he had some protection from the gunfire. He partially loosened Kelly’s protective vest and found he had been hit multiple times in the chest. The bullets penetrated the vest and traveled through Kelly’s body. McManaway could see points from the rounds protruding from the back of the vest.
He could see a woman, whom previous witnesses identified as Poplawaki’s mother, Margaret, standing in the garage. McManaway said she was wearing a bathrobe and pacing in circles.
“I tried to coax her to come toward me,” he said. “She shook her head no. Then she started smoking a cigarette.”
3:15 p.m.
The prosecution played for the jury Officer Mayhle`s call for help over the police radio in the seconds before he was killed.
In his frantic call, Mayhle can be heard yelling “Code 3, officer down!”
The recording was played as a part Officer Wade Sarver`s testimony. Wade testified that he and his partner had just finished roll call at Squirrel Hill`s Zone 4 station when they heard the frantic call for help. He explained that Code 3 means that “someone is dying and drop what you`re doing and help.”
When Sarver arrived, he saw Officer Timothy McManaway run towards Officer Kelly`s white SUV to try and help. He said he heard automatic weapons firing from the house.
“I saw a muzzleflash and I aimed for that and fired my weapon,” Sarver said. “I believe I hit (the shooter).”
Sarver said the shooting from the house stopped momentarily after he fired. He started to tear up on the witness stand after describing McManaway`s attempt to rescue Kelly.
“I saw McManaway trying to pull Kelly to cover. Kelly kept raising his arm to say, ‘Come help me,`” Sarver testified. “He did it three times and then he couldn`t do it any more.”
2:45 p.m.
Neighbor Michelle Ostrowski told the jury she called 911 as soon as she realized people were getting shot. Tranquilli played a recording of her frantic call for the jury.
“A cop just got shot,” she screamed to the call-taker.
Several jurors visibly reacted to the call. Some closed their eyes. Others looked disgusted.
Ostrowski testified that she took several pictures of the incident as it unfolded and handed the camera over to police. Tranquilli said he plans to show the jury those pictures later.
Poplawski`s attorney, Lisa Middleman, asked if Margaret Poplawski ever helped any of the officers after they had been shot.
“I did not see that,” Ostrowski said.
1:30 p.m.
Testimony resumed.
12:20 p.m.
Alfred Lejpras testified he saw neighbor Richard Poplawski pumping rounds from a rifle into Officer Stephen Mayhle as the officer lay at the foot of Poplawski’s porch steps in a pool of blood.
He could see the rounds impacting Mayhle’s body.
“I heard, ‘Pop. Pop. Pop,’ he said. “I saw a man standing on the porch and Officer Mayhle was down there on the ground.”
He said Poplawski, wearing a long T-shirt and what he believed to be sweatpants, turned and stepped over Paul Sciullo’s body in the front doorway as he reentered his house.
Lejpras said he yelled for his wife.
“I said, ‘Somebody out there is killing police officers. Get back in the bedroom,’” he said.
Lejpras went through the house and locked all the doors, hearing more gunshots from outside. He returned to his bedroom window facing the street and said he saw Officer Eric Kelly lying on the ground behind a white sport utility vehicle.
Kelly’s daughter, Tameka, tearfully testified that her father picked her up minutes earlier from the Heartland Nursing Home where she had just finished an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. Eric Kelly, who typically picked her up from work and drove her home, had just finished working a night shift she said.
When they arrived at their house on Premier Street, about two blocks from the Poplawski home, they heard a series of gunshots, and her dad received a faint dispatch that she could not hear over his police radio.
“He just told me to get in the house,” she sobbed. “He told me to lock the doors. He’d be back.”
She last saw her father, who was off-duty and driving his personal vehicle, racing toward Fairfield Street.
Judge Manning announced a lunch break. The case is set to resume at 1:25 p.m.
11:50 a.m.
Poplawski’s neighbor, JoAnn Devinney, who lives across the street, told the jury that when she opened her front door the morning of April 4, 2009, she saw two dead police officers on her neighbor’s property.
One lay in the doorway to the Poplawski house and the second at the bottom of the front porch steps, face up, she said.
“I heard noises hitting against my house. I thought it was garbage cans because it was windy that day. My husband said, ‘That sounds like gunfire.’ We opened the door and I saw two policemen. One was lying in the door and another officer was at the foot of the steps,” Devinney testified.
Devinney said she saw Richard Poplawski standing in his mother’s garage wearing a long white T-shirt with a long gun on his right side. His mother was next to him, wearing a pink bathrobe. Devinney assumed the officers were dead because they weren’t moving and she saw blood.
As Devinney testified, Tranquilli presented a picture of the downed officers to the jury. The picture shows Sciullo, through the door, and Mayhle at the bottom of the porch steps, in a pool of blood. Several family members of the victims looked away when Tranquilli displayed the picture on the large courtroom screen for the jury.
Sciullo’s parents and the widows of Mayhle and Kelly are seated in the first row of the courtroom gallery.
11:35 a.m.
Allegheny County 911 call-taker Shannon Basa-Sabol told the jury this morning that she took the initial call from Margaret Poplawski, Richard Poplawski’s mother, which precipitated the incident.
Basa-Sabol said Margaret Poplawski called 911 to say she wanted her son out of the house because he came home drunk the night before. When Basa-Sabol asked if there were weapons in the home, Margaret Poplawski said there were but they were all legal and that her son was not threatening her with any of them.
“I told her we’d send an officer and I sent the call to dispatch,” Basa-Sabol testified.
When Basa-Sabol relayed the call to the police dispatcher, she typed in “no weapons” because she said her training had taught her that since no weapons were involved in the incident and no one was being threatened it was not necessary.
In the days after the shootings, 911 officials apologized to police for not notifying responding officers about the guns.
11:15 a.m.
Prosecutors released a recording of the 911 call made by Poplawski’s mother, Margaret Poplawski, on the morning of the shootings.
10:10 a.m.
Seating is limited in Judge Manning’s courtroom and about 60 people, including police officers and court personnel, watched the trial’s first minutes via closed-circuit television in a vacant courtroom.
The onlookers watched attentively as Deputy District Attorney Mark V. Tranquilli laid out his case. Tranquilli told the jury he planned to call about 50 witnesses and present dozens of photographs of the crime scene.
“Fallen heroes and potentially fallen heroes. That’s what this case is all about,” he said.
10:05 a.m.
Opening statements began with Deputy District Attorney Mark V. Tranquilli telling the jury, and a packed courtroom, that Richard Poplawski intentionally killed three Pittsburgh police officers.
Assistant Public Defender Lisa Middleman will give her opening statement afterward.
The jury, selected in Dauphin County, has 18 members — 12 who will decide the case and six alternates. Initially Judge Manning ruled that only four alternates who would travel to Pittsburgh but changed his mind. County workers expanded his jury box last week to make room for the extra people.
9:15 a.m.
Six deputy sheriffs led an expressionless Richard Poplawski into court shortly as news photographers and onlookers strained for a look at the accused. Defense attorney Lisa Middleman walked in front of the group.
Poplawski, in shackles with his hands cuffed in front, wore a blue shirt, gray pleated slacks and blue tie. He was clean shaven and his hair is cut short.
8:50 a.m.
About 150 police officers from several departments lined Ross Street this morning outside of the Allegheny County Courthouse standing shoulder to shoulder in the moments before opening statements are scheduled to begin inside.
The line of officers included law enforcement from the city, state police, Ross, Moon and other departments.
Inside the building, security was tight and staff placed a metal detector outside the third-floor courtroom of Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning. A line of reporters and police officers formed early to get in the courtroom.
Republished with permission of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
God Bless and Stay Safe
BOTB
”Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for that of a friend” ~John 15:13~
The ‘S’ Generation: A new breed of LEOs enters our ranks
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SWAT Officer with Lt. Dan Marcou |
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The ‘S’ Generation: A new breed of LEOs enters our ranksHonoring one fallen warrior’s memory as we look ahead to the new line of law enforcers taking up the fight to protect our country and out communities |
| A while back I was teaching an academy class when at one point I asked, “Let me see the hands of those who have been in the military.” One bright young man with a contagious smile raised his hand. I could see he was a warrior so I asked, “Iraq or Afghanistan?
Still smiling, he humbly answered, “Iraq and Afghanistan.” As the class progressed I could not help but notice the bearing and maturity of this young veteran who had stuck his neck out to serve his country and now was training to risk the same neck to serve his community. I was inspired to write these yet unpublished words, which I would like to share with you now. The ‘S’ Generation These young adults have seen things most people will never see, and performed repeated acts of courage out of a sense of duty to God, Country, and their buddies serving along-side them. Many have done these things before they even reached their 21st birthday. These honorable young warriors have guarded the Khyber Pass and taken Baghdad. Some of them rolled into Tikrit and fought their way inch by inch through the steaming streets of Falujah. These warriors are now finishing their terms of enlistment, which many have even chosen to extend. This generation has risked it all because United States of America was attacked. They courageously volunteered, and joined committing all to the fight. While many Americans wavered and vacillated at home these young warriors never did. They risked all against an enemy as dangerous as any ever faced on a battle field and they triumphed over and over again and continue to do so. The Good News All of you have heard of the “Baby Boomers,” “Generation X” and “Generation Y” and the “Millenials.” Many of you have discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each. Might I offer that is a new generation emerging that could be dubbed the “S” for “Service Generation,” or even the “September 11th Generation.” Some of these recruits arrived imbued with a taste of service and wish to continue to serve. Others were inspired by older members of their units, who were already police officers at home, who answered the call of their reserve units and donned fatigues to join their units in the desert. Academy instructors can enter a class and spend an hour with the students and pick out with great accuracy the students, who have “extended their tour of service,” into law enforcement. There is a certain visible, commitment, maturity, knowledge, base, skill base and record of sacrifice that one can not help but notice subtly on display. This can only be good news for law enforcement. These young veterans are joining with non-military recruits, who do not have the same experience, but are similarly motivated by the dangers of a post-9/11 world. The words serve and protect have great meaning to this generation. The Future Could there be a changing of the guard? Has the next greatest generation, Generation S, arrived? Is it a distinct generation of young Americans forged in the fire of war and honed by service to God and country? Are they stepping forward, laying down the sword, while they pick up the shield. Are they about to lift American Law Enforcement to new heights? Only time will tell… A Fallen Warrior Craig Birkholz — the young warrior— represented his generation and our profession well. He has given the “last full measure of devotion,” and on March 26, 2011 he became the 50th police officer laid to rest this year. A bullet silenced his young heart, but only served to send his noble spirit soaring as the sad but beautiful wailing of the bag pipes played, and the harsh, echoing crack of the 21-gun salute crossed the skies. I will close with the words Craig closed each one of his memos with, for those who might wish to pick up his fallen standard and carry on: “Stay Safe, Stay Strong, and Stay Positive.” |
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