Suspect, 24, shoots at police
BUTLER TWP — State police filed attempted homicide and other charges against a township man who is accused of shooting a 9 mm rifle at two troopers responding to a violent domestic call at his parents' house in Lyndora early Sunday morning.
Samuel Louis Wheeler, 24, of Butler was shot and wounded when the troopers returned fire, hitting the suspect's left hand. None of the state police or township officers who answered the call shortly before 5 a.m. were injured.
Wheeler remains under police guard today at UPMC Presbyterian hospital in Pittsburgh, where he was taken for medical treatment of serious injuries to his hand, including two fingers.
District Judge Dave Kovach — 10 hours after the shooting — issued an arrest warrant for Wheeler. Police plan to serve the warrant upon Wheeler's release from the hospital, authorities said.
Investigators believe some type of disagreement Wheeler had with an ex-girlfriend, who lives next to his parents' house in the 400 block of Bessemer Avenue, and two other women who live across the street, set him off, court documents said.
He had driven to the neighborhood about 4:30 a.m. and several neighbors saw him run into his family's house, a two-story duplex.
Along with his parents, Wheeler's older brother and wife and the couple's 14-year-old son live there.
Police said Wheeler was holding a knife that had an 8-inch blade. He ran past his father and into the house.
“I came out and was trying to calm him down,” his father Charles Wheeler told the Butler Eagle.
In the house, the younger Wheeler went for his father's Highpoint 9 mm rifle.
“He knows where I keep it,” the elder Wheeler said. “I keep my rifle loaded but not chambered, for protection.”
Wheeler and his father began fighting over the rifle, which the suspect eventually got hold of. At one point during the struggle, police said, Samuel Wheeler swiped the knife at his father.
Charles denied his son threatened him with the knife.With the rifle, Wheeler “went outside screaming,” according to a police affidavit.Neighbors told investigators that moments later, Wheeler fired two shots at Crystal Brooks and her roommate Renee Defoggi, who live on the other side of the road across from the Wheeler family. Neither woman was injured.While listening to the gunfire outside, Charles Wheeler was on the telephone with a 911 dispatcher, reporting what was happening.Township officers got to the home first. State troopers Brian Knirnschild and Christopher Cialella heard the radio call and arrived a short time later.The troopers, about 60 yards away on Bessemer Avenue, spotted Wheeler with a rifle on the porch of his parents' house. The officers ordered him to put down the gun.“Wheeler then pointed the gun at the troopers and fired a round at them,” documents said.In response, the troopers — one armed with an AR-15 patrol rifle and the other with a .45-caliber pistol — fired at Wheeler. One round hit him in the hand, police said.The suspect went down but immediately got up “and pointed the rifle back at the troopers,” documents said. Knirnschild and Cialella fired again.Wheeler fled, running into the house, out the back. Police found him a short time later lying on the sidewalk.He is charged with two counts of attempted homicide and multiple counts of aggravated assault, assault of law enforcement officers and reckless endangerment.He will be arraigned on the charges upon his discharge from the hospital.Charles Wheeler told the Butler Eagle his son's actions Sunday were out of character and he has never been arrested since moving to Butler County from Texas several years ago.Court records confirmed Samuel Wheeler has no criminal record here. However, Charles Wheeler acknowledged his son did find himself in trouble with the law in Texas for selling prescription drugs.Knirnschild and Cialella have been have been placed on temporary administrative duties, in keeping with standard police procedure, authorities said.
