STATE
MECHANICSBURG — Authorities say a car flipped over the infield fence at a central Pennsylvania speedway and struck a spectator, killing him.
The Cumberland County coroner's office said two Spring Car drivers crashed into each other while rounding a turn at Williams Grove Speedway just before 9:30 p.m. Friday.
Coroner Charles Hall said one of the cars went out of control, hit the inside wall and then flipped up and over the infield fence, striking a man sitting in the back of a pickup truck that was parked along the fence.
Hall said 67-year-old Richard Speck Jr. of Mechanicsburg was pronounced dead at the scene of multiple traumatic injuries.
The rest of Friday night's racing program was canceled. State police, the coroner's office and speedway officials are investigating.
SOUTH PARK — Police say an officer shot and wounded a man after a struggle that followed an early morning police chase.Allegheny County police say officers in Monongahela tried to stop a car shortly before 3 a.m. Saturday but it fled into Allegheny County, then went out of control and hit two parked cars and a residential structure in South Park Township.Police say a Monongahela officer struggled with a fleeing suspect, and after using a stun gun to little effect, shot the suspect once in the torso. The 29-year-old suspect was taken to a hospital in stable condition and faces charges of aggravated assault on a police officer and resisting arrest. The officer was treated for bruises, cuts and abrasions. County police are investigating.
PITTSBURGH — A former Pittsburgh homicide detective accused of filing false police reports and evidence-tampering has been fined $200 after pleading no contest to two counts.Margaret “Peg” Sherwood, 53, entered the plea Friday to hindering prosecution or apprehension by providing false information to law enforcement. In such a plea, a defendant doesn't acknowledge guilt but concedes that prosecutors have enough evidence for a conviction.State prosecutors accused her of providing false information in two 2014 slayings and trying to scuttle a domestic violence prosecution of a jailhouse informant.Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill Rangos sentenced Sherwood, who was hired as a police officer in 1989 and retired in June 2018 after 27 years, to a $200 fine and imposed “no further penalty.”
