STATE
MILFORD — A man who eluded police for 48 days after allegedly shooting to death a state trooper and wounding another is due in court for a preliminary hearing which could decide whether his case goes to county court for trial.
A Pennsylvania district judge must decide today whether there are sufficient grounds to send the case against Eric Frein, 31, to county court.
Frein has been charged with shooting Cpl. Bryon Dickson and Trooper Alex Douglass Sept. 12 outside their state police station in northeastern Pennsylvania. He was captured Oct. 30 at an abandoned airplane hangar in the Pocono Mountains.
Authorities say Frein confessed to what he described as an assassination designed to “wake people up” and result in a change in government. Dickson was killed and Douglass was wounded.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
The manhunt, with drew a large police force to the rural area, frightened residents as there were numerous reported sightings of Frein, an expert marksman. A team of federal marshals performing a systematic search stumbled across him about 30 miles from the scene of the shooting and were able to arrest him.
Frein was shackled with Dickson's handcuffs and driven to the police station in Dickson's squad car.
The hearing will be held in the Pike County Courthouse in Milford.
APOLLO — Icy road conditions are being blamed for two pedestrian deaths.Apollo police say 68-year-old Gary Beigay had just parked his van outside his secondhand store around 7:30 a.m. Saturday when the vehicle started to slide backward on the icy street. Beigay went behind it in an attempt to stop it, but it rolled over him and he died of chest injuries, police said.In Sewickley, a 49-year-old woman was killed Saturday when she was struck by a car sliding on ice, police told a Pittsburgh newspaper. Kimberly Moran had been walking two dogs at the time, the paper said.The ice-covered roads caused dozens of crashes throughout Western Pennsylvania early Saturday.
PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh's new police chief is being praised by the mayor and criticized by the president of the police union for being photographed on New Year's Eve holding a sign that says, “I resolve to challenge racism (at) work.”Mayor Bill Peduto says McLay — who was pictured holding up a sign that a protester brought to the city's First Night celebration — was simply recognizing that racism exists and acknowledging there's work to be done restoring trust between the city's police and the black community.But Fraternal Order of Police President Howard McQuillan says the sign paints city police — especially white officers — as racists, and violates a policy governing police participation in social media.
