A lone gunmen killed four people, before he took his own life. He took his own life down in Bucks County. It was a dozy of a case for a couple of reasons. I worked on this case. It was something.
First of all, it took place during a hurricane. Hurricane Irene was the worst hurricane to hit PA in many years. To make things even worse, the alleged gunmen was a military man with experience fighting overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq. He conducted his operations much in a military style, although over a family matter. Basically it was the kind of situation family courts are established to take care of, but when the courts had failed, he tried to deal with the situation with force. I am quite sure in his mind he was doing what he saw as being absolutely necessary for his daughter. I think he might have come back from the war a little tapped.
He had the six year old with him for a while, too.
“Grandmas in heaven” the little girl said.
There are a fair few veterans in the Bucks County area. There’s one guy you see around he has a tattoo for the USMC on one arm and on the other arm he has a cross and he’ll tell you that he’s got the cross because he has sinned. His sin was killing 27 Iraqis in combat, he’ll tell you.
I didn’t see the full file on the victims. In a lot of kidnappings the child is kidnapped by their own parents. This one is kind of similar. I don’t know exactly what the deal was, but the mother of his daughter, his ex-wife, his ex-wife’s mother, and the very young son of the mother’s new boyfriend were the victims. I think the boyfriend’s kid was kind of collateral damage, but the essence of his motivation was that he didn’t really want his daughter to be raised by the mother’s boyfriend. So in essence he was doing what he felt was necessary for his daughter. If the mom’s boyfriend does oxycodone and has a sex offense rap sheet, I could almost see it.
Obviously, it was quite complicated.
He did shoot at police though. That was something I was not a fan of. He’s solider so, he let of a bunch of rounds in the chase. That was right here in Bucks County, because that’s where the ex-wife’s mother lived.
He dropped the kid of with a local hospital and a note. I’m not allowed to disclose the contents of the note he left with the orderly.
We had SWAT after him and everything. His plan on the surface it looked smart, to use the hurricane to get away, police being otherwise occupied. SWAT don’t do disaster relief, so it didn’t work as well you might think.
I mean, the gunmen is dead. Took his own life to avoid capture. His goal appears to have been to insure that his daughter was not raised by the ex-wife, her boyfriend, or the wife’s mother. He was successful in making sure that would never happen because they are all dead. Most of us would say that what he did to his daughter would screw her up more than letting the wife raise the kid. I haven’t seen the files on the victims, so I don’t really know the answers to that. I don’t know what it is he saw and went through overseas either.
Anybody who left Bucks County when the storm was about to hit was very smart. We had to lock down people because of the gunmen while flooding was going on. It was madness. Excuse my language, but it was complete fucking insanity. I hated every second of it. You go door to door and tell someone whose home is being flooded not to leave the house because there’s a man with a semi-automatic running around stark raving mad?
That was terrible.
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