Louis G. Spencer, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed on December 24, 1946, while pursuing a man who had fired a gun near Spencer’s Hill District home. Spencer, who was off duty at the time, responded to the shot and encountered Oneal Coleman firing into another neighbor’s home.
The two men fought and Spencer was killed. Coleman was convicted of second-degree murder on April 9, 1947, and sentenced to ten to twenty years in prison.
State Killings in the Steel City: The History of the Death Penalty in Pittsburgh 