State police struggle as crises mount
For the Pennsylvania State Police, the timing could not have been worse. They were still mourning a young trooper who was shot to death at his northeast Pennsylvania barracks. They were worrying about another who was seriously injured in the same attack.
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For the Pennsylvania State Police, the timing could not have been worse.
They were still mourning a young trooper who was shot to death at his northeast Pennsylvania barracks. They were worrying about another who was seriously injured in the same attack.
More than 1,000 officers were three weeks into a grueling backwoods manhunt, on high alert for booby traps set by the alleged cop-hating killer.
In Harrisburg, their commissioner had recently been linked to a pornographic e-mail scandal.
And then, like another ton of bricks, came the news Tuesday afternoon that a rookie trooper had been killed during a training exercise in Montgomery County - shot in the chest when a fellow officer's gun accidentally went off.
In the days after, the police struggled with the unrelenting public attention brought by the three crises. There was confusion and contradiction. And silence.
A spokeswoman said Commissioner Frank Noonan was unavailable to comment for this article, and numerous other officials refused to speak, even on issues unrelated to the killings.
But sources close to the investigations, who would not agree to be quoted, say the tragedies are taking a toll.
In the hours after Trooper David Kedra, a 26-year-old rookie from Northeast Philadelphia, was shot and airlifted to a hospital Tuesday, the police appeared to struggle to determine who was in charge, sources said, and how to release information about the shooting.
A lieutenant and others who addressed the media the next day praised the slain trooper as a dedicated and tenacious officer. But they were also visibly rattled and stumbled over details as simple as Kedra's age.
By week's end, information about the shooting remained scarce. Police had not disclosed whose gun misfired, whether he or she was still on duty, whether it happened at a shooting range, classroom, drill house, or somewhere else at the training facility.
"Accidental discharges are very rare," said David Grossi, a retired police lieutenant and firearms instructor. "Accident kind of implies that something went wrong with the gun."
"Some might call it an 'unintentional discharge.' That's perhaps more accurate," said Emanuel Kapelsohn, a lawyer and board member of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors.
Kapelsohn said that, although he did not know the details of Kedra's death, there were some cardinal rules that apply to all gun-training scenarios:
Treat all guns as though they are loaded; always point the gun in a safe direction; leave your finger off the trigger until you are sure of your target.
"They are redundant in a sense, an overlapping system of safety rules," Kapelsohn said. "So, for instance, if we treat every gun like it's loaded, we would never carelessly point a gun at a person. But we're all human beings, and we can never reduce that risk to zero."
Another tragedy
A memorial service for Kedra is scheduled for Monday in Philadelphia. It will be the second funeral in less than three weeks for the troopers, hundreds of whom are still slogging through the forest, hunting for Eric Frein.
Frein, 31, a self-styled survivalist, shot two troopers, killing Bryon Dickson, on Sept. 12 and has since been hiding out in the Pocono woods, eluding capture through a homefield advantage and threat of explosives.
Residents in the search area, a five-mile patch of forest in Monroe and Pike Counties, have posted blue ribbons and signs thanking officers for their work. But some are growing weary as the hunt goes into a fourth week.
State police have said they believe the cooling weather or dwindling supplies will soon flush Frein out of the woods.
Noonan has not been visible in the search area in recent weeks. He has kept a low profile since Sept. 26, when the attorney general named him and seven other state officials as senders or recipients of a string of pornographic e-mails using government accounts.
Two officials in the state Department of Environmental Protection resigned Thursday as a result of the scandal. But Gov. Corbett stood behind Noonan, saying he had seen no evidence that the state's top cop had opened or viewed any of the sexually explicit material.
Meanwhile, the force is hunting for Frein and preparing for Kedra's service.
Kapelsohn said the days and weeks ahead would be difficult not just for Kedra's family and friends, but for everyone on the force.
"The nature of the police or a military is that . . . the bonds are very close, more so than in many other kinds of employment," he said. "If one is injured, all are affected."
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Inquirer staff writers Mari A. Schaefer, Laura McCrystal, and Ben Finley contributed to this article.