Chief: Shooting near Edinboro campus was drug-related heist

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PITTSBURGH (AP) – An Edinboro University student charged with shooting two others in an off-campus apartment was being robbed of drugs by the victims, who will likely also face charges, police said Tuesday.
The shooting suspect, 20-year-old Devin Stevenson of Franklin, did not immediately tell police he was selling nearly $2,000 worth of marijuana when he came to the police station to report shooting two men who tried to rob him Friday night, Edinboro borough police Chief Jeff Craft said. The borough and main campus of the state-owned university of the same name are located about 100 miles north of Pittsburgh.
“About an hour after the shooting, the defendant came to the police department and reported being robbed,” Craft said. “He was covered in blood and so on and he admitted to shooting the two guys and ended up having a gun in his car.”
Since then, police have determined “the shooter himself was selling drugs and the people who were shot were going to rob him,” the chief said.
Online court records don’t list an attorney for Stevenson, who remained in the Erie County Prison on Tuesday on charges of attempted homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment and a weapons violation. Police also expect to file drug-related charges against Stevenson, Craft said. For now, he faces a preliminary hearing on April 1 on the shooting charges only.
The shooting victim/robbery suspects are named in the police complaint charging Stevenson, but The Associated Press is not identifying them because police have not yet charged them.
Craft said Stevenson went to the apartment to sell drugs to a 19-year-old student when another student, 22, came in with a gun and wearing a mask and took the drugs.
Stevenson shot the masked man in the torso and thigh as he ran away, and also wounded the first student in the shoulder, the chief said.
Both shooting victims were taken to UPMC Hamot hospital in Erie, which is 20 miles north of Edinboro. The man wounded in the shoulder has been released from the hospital, but the masked man was still admitted Tuesday, the chief said. His condition was not available because the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which runs the hospital, doesn’t generally release conditions of victims of violent crimes.
The shooting prompted a campus lockdown as a precaution.
University President Julie Wollman said the state-owned school plans to work with the surrounding community to address violence. Trey Gunter, 22, of Pittsburgh, is awaiting trial on charges that he fatally shot a former student in a dispute over a stolen gun and drugs in November. That shooting also occurred off campus and Gunter was a senior at the time.
About 2,000 students live on the campus, although more than 6,800 are enrolled at the university’s main and satellite campuses.
Police: Man who pinned officer with SUV had heroin, knife
PITTSBURGH (AP) – Police say a man arrested after putting his SUV in reverse and pinning an officer was attempting to use heroin and had refused to drop a pocketknife when the officer confronted him at a Pittsburgh park and ride.
Joseph Dwinga was charged Monday with assaulting an officer, carrying a firearm without a license, reckless endangerment and other offenses. The 21-year-old has five active criminal cases since Feb. 5. Those charges include theft.
Information on his bail status and a lawyer to comment on the charges in Monday’s incident wasn’t immediately available. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 31.
Officials say the Port Authority of Allegheny County officer fired twice after he was struck by the SUV. They hit the vehicle but not the driver. The officer wasn’t seriously injured.
Trooper arrested after wedding brawl sues Pittsburgh cops
PITTSBURGH (AP) – A Pennsylvania state trooper sued Pittsburgh police on Tuesday, saying they arrested him on false charges and used excessive force – including a kick to the groin – when he tried to calm a rowdy groomsman following a brawl after his brother’s wedding.
Trooper David Williams, 35, of Plum, contends city officers falsely claimed he attacked them when, instead, they pushed and punched him for no reason, escalating a situation he was trying to help defuse.
Williams spent 17 hours in jail and was suspended by the state police for 10 days without pay before Allegheny County prosecutors dropped charges including rioting and aggravated assault – both felonies – at a preliminary hearing after the Sept. 1 melee.
“It’s just not true, everything they filed against me,” Williams told The Associated Press, referring to the criminal charges. “All these charges, they just don’t exist.”
His lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, seeks unspecified monetary damages.
Attorney Timothy O’Brien said the lawsuit targets the “unnecessary escalation of otherwise manageable situations. It’s a problem within the Pittsburgh Police Department and it’s a problem across the country.”
City police have a history of excessive force complaints. A class-action lawsuit brought by 66 people alleging rough treatment, false arrest or both resulted in a 1997 consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department requiring the city to better train its officers and monitor complaints against them.
More recently, a federal jury last year awarded $119,000 to a young Black man after finding police wrongly arrested him for prowling when he was walking to his grandmother’s house in January 2009. The jury rejected claims that three white officers used excessive force during the arrest.
O’Brien said the case of Williams, who is White, proves nobody is safe from such abuses.
“If it can happen to Mr. Williams – a police officer, a state trooper – then who amongst us is not in danger of having it happen to them?” O’Brien said.
City police spokeswoman Sonya Toler says the bureau doesn’t comment on litigation. The city’s law department didn’t immediately comment.
Williams’ arrest, captured on surveillance video, occurred after a fight broke out among the wedding party in a parking lot after they got off a riverboat.
The groom was handcuffed and seated, but a groomsman – not yet under arrest – was mouthing off to police and claiming to have HIV, Williams said, apparently hoping in his drunken state that would discourage police from arresting him, too.
Williams said he told the groomsman to calm down and to cooperate with police, only to have an officer push him out of the way. After that confrontation, other officers poked, pushed and punched Williams, before several grabbed him and put him on the ground, even though he politely explained who he was, didn’t use profanity or attack the police, the lawsuit said.
The video, which doesn’t have audio, appears to support Williams’ claims that he was calmly acting as a peacemaker and never attacked the officers.
Police: Man accosted nurse, sprayed extinguisher at hospital
PITTSBURGH (AP) – Pittsburgh police have charged a man with felony criminal mischief and other crimes for allegedly spraying a fire extinguisher in a patient information area of a hospital after angrily demanding that a nurse give him a cigarette.
Police say 23-year-old Christopher Martinez was also drunk during the bizarre series of incidents at UPMC Shadyside hospital about 5 p.m. Monday.
Police say Martinez confronted a nurse ending her shift and threatened to “mess her up” if she didn’t give him a cigarette. Police say he also smashed a glass extinguisher container with a rock before spraying the device. Police say the damage exceeded $1,000.
Online court records don’t list an attorney for Martinez who was not immediately arraigned. It was not immediately clear whether Martinez was instead undergoing a mental health evaluation.

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