Shootings, sentencing made local headlines as the year went by
Several local police-related items topped the news in 2018.
Drive-by shooting coupleOn April 15, a couple wanted to play basketball, but instead they were arrested at the Butler YMCA. Staff members went for a full-court press after recognizing that Raheem Robinson, 27, and Mackenzie Peters, 23 were wanted by police in an April 5 shooting.“We sold them a day membership and then just kept an eye on them while we alerted the authorities in the building. It could have been nothing. It turned out to be something,” said David Hilliard, the president of Butler's YMCA, at the time.Hilliard said he alerted authorities — including District Attorney Richard Goldinger, who was exercising at the time — in the building about the couple's presence. Goldinger alerted police and they soon arrived to arrest and charge both Peters and Robinson with felony counts of attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon as well as misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person, tampering with or fabricating evidence and criminal conspiracy.Robinson was also charged with persons not to possess a firearm, a second-degree felony.The charges stem from what police say was a shootout in the 300 block of North Sixth Avenue April 5.Robinson was also charged with persons not to possess a firearm, a second-degree felony.Peters is the mother of Bentley Thomas Miller, who died last year after suffering injuries in what police say was a sexual assault. Both suspects will enter the new year with their cases still unresolved.
<b>Crime of passion</b>Joshua P. Crawford, 32, of Chicora shot his wife to death in 2016. This year, he pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, receiving a sentence of 10 to 23 years in prison with 592 days of credit for time served.Sarah Crawford, a mother of four, was just 30 when she died, gunned down by her new husband on Dec. 4, 2016, at the couple's home on East Slippery Rock Road in Donegal Township. According to court records, Crawford shot his wife once in the chest with a .30-06 hunting rifle during an argument.Under state law, third-degree murder involves an indifference to one's own actions potentially causing another's death. It carries a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison.In earlier pretrial court filings, Crawford's attorney, public defender Joseph Smith, suggested his client was suffering from a mental infirmity that night, and hinted of a possible insanity defense.At his sentencing hearing, Crawford expressed remorse and offered an apology to his wife's family.“My actions that night are unacceptable,” he said, standing before Judge William Shaffer in orange prison garb. “I still love Sarah and I live through what I did every night.”Before Shaffer handed down the sentence, Jennifer Mazinski Cromer Baysinger, Sarah Crawford's mother, delivered a brief victim impact statement from a wheelchair.“There's not too much I can say,” she said. “I can't explain. There are no words. The depression (is) so bad.”<b>2 Officer-involved shootings</b>During the course of the year, there were two incidents in which police shot at civilians, one of which resulted in a fatality. On Dec. 19, District Attorney Richard Goldinger cleared the officers involved in both of the shootings.In the fatal incident, police were called to a Nursery Road home in Forward Township on the morning of Sept. 18 over reports of an armed man “making threats to himself, others and police responders,” according to a police report.Police killed Walter Wiemann, 73, after the armed standoff escalated with the activation of the Special Emergency Response Team, a helicopter being called in and the deployment of a 17,550-pound armored vehicle known as a Bearcat — which is capable of toppling a wall — tearing down a fence and resisting small-arms fire, all while transporting 10 to 12 heavily-armed officers. Additionally, four negotiators were on the scene, according to earlier reports. But when Wiemann aimed what police described in the report as a scoped rifle, one or more officers shot him. He succumbed to his wounds later that day at a Pittsburgh hospital.Wiemann's rifle was loaded, police said, but he did not fire any shots. Police would not say if there is a video recording of the shooting. A few days afterward, Wiemann's daughter, Kimberly Ketcham, wrote a letter to the Butler Eagle, criticizing the paper's coverage of the incident and noting that her father had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.“The state police unexpectedly and tragically robbed him of his life. Then, to add insult to our trauma, the Butler Eagle robbed us of the ability to grieve in private and stole my father's dignity and reputation,” Ketcham wrote in the published letter. She also took the chance to remember her father as someone who “donated blood on a regular basis and participated in the Connoquenessing Creek cleanup for many years.”The second officer-involved shooting is a pending criminal case against the shooting victim that will continue into 2019. During the early morning hours of Oct. 21, police responded to a report of a suicidal woman and were confronted by Brittany Ann Kitner holding a shotgun at her apartment on New Castle Road. After a brief standoff, at least one officer shot Kitner in the thigh, according to earlier reports. Kitner faces charges of aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment.
