Author: Bill Lofquist

Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo responded to call from Margaret Poplawski that her son, Richard, was being belligerent in her home on April 4, 2009. When they arrived at the home, they were ambushed by Poplawski, who was armed with multiple weapons. Both officers were killed.

Officer Eric Kelly was off duty at the time but lived near by and responded to the scene when he heard the police call. He was killed as he sought to aid his already shot colleagues.

Poplawski was arrested after a four hour standoff in which he and three additional officers were wounded.

There are conflicting accounts as to whether Poplawski’s mother, Margaret Poplawski, knew the officers were being drawn into an ambush. However, it is known that the 911 dispatcher failed to tell police that there were guns in the home after being told that there were by Margaret Poplawski.

Richard Poplawski, an avowed white supremacist, anti-Semite, and gun rights extremist, was convicted of three counts of murder and twenty-five related charges on June 25, 2011. He was sentenced to death three days later. His was the last death sentence imposed in Allegheny County.

The killings of these three officers represent the largest loss of life in a single incident in the history of the Pittsburgh Police Department.

Coleman Regis McDonough, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed at the scene of a domestic disturbance in Hazelwood on July 6, 1965.

Leroy Scott, 25, had gone to the Godfrey residence after midnight on July 5 to see his 16-year old girlfriend, Linda Godfrey, whom he had been barred from seeing. When her father, Aaron, intervened, an argument ensued and police were called to the scene. When police responded, Scott shot McDonough, a former professional football player. Two other officers were injured. Aaron Godfrey was also killed, shot mistakenly by police.

Scott fled and committed suicide.

James R. Lauer, Sheriff of Northumberland County, was in Allegheny County on May 27, 1959, to deliver a prisoner to Western Penitentiary. That prisoner, James F. Butler, an inmate an Eastern Penitentiary serving a robbery sentence, was in the back seat of the car handcuffed to a belt, while Lauer and driver Merlin Diehl were in the front seat.

Somehow Lauer escaped from the belt and seized a gun from the front seat and shot Lauer. When Diehl stopped the car to assist Lauer, Butler fled. He was captured by police the next morning.

Butler was found guilty of first degree murder on May 20, 1960, and sentenced to death on November 28, 1960. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Butler’s conviction in 1963.

At retrial, he pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

William H. Heagy, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed on March 25, 1954, when responding to a shooting incident in the Hill District.

Aloysuis Spalding, a former heavyweight boxer, was involved in a fight with another man when a woman intervened, leading Spalding to fire a shot at her. He then fled. Heagy found him hiding and was shot and killed. Spalding hanged himself in his police station cell three days later.

Heagy had been a principal figure in the Cleveland Thompson case, the last Allegheny County execution. Heagy was the original arresting officer. Thompson’s defense subsequently used Heagy’s history of “chronic alcoholism” in an effort to reverse his conviction.

Charles McKinley, an officer with the Verona Borough Police Department, was shot and killed when he responded to a domestic disturbance on February 4, 1954.

Charles Flajnik had been arguing with his wife, leading her to call the police. When McKinley arrived, Flajnik shot him as he entered the house. Flajnik then shot and killed himself.

Joseph Chmelynski, an officer with the Bethel Park Police Department, responded to a call from neighbors of a burglary in progress on March 5, 1948. Arriving at the scene, he encountered Edward DiPofi and John R. Wilson in the unoccupied home.

While handcuffed and being escorted to a police car, DiPofi used a gun concealed in his waistband to shoot Chmelynski and shoot another officer, George Kercher. Chmelynski died four days later.

DiPofi and Wilson fled. Police set a trap for DiPofi at his home on March 6. When two men approached the home, police opened fire with a submachine gun. The two men, a police officer and a passerby, were wounded.

DiPofi and Wilson were apprehended later that same day, when a suspicious taxi driver alerted police he had just dropped off the suspects at DiPofi’s mother’s house.

Wilson pleaded guilty to murder and received a life sentence. DiPofi was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. He was executed on January 9, 1950.

Edward Conway, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed when he and his partner responded to a robbery in progress at a wholesale grocery store on June 27, 1939.

Immediately after the killing, police in East Liberty put out a dragnet, arresting at least 25 black men. The manhunt “was one of the most thorough in the history of the city.”

Among those arrested were William Walker and Benjamin Ginyard. Walker confessed, pled guilty, and testified against Ginyard, whom he identified as the shooter. Walker was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Ginyard pled not guilty. He was convicted of first degree murder in October 1939 and sentenced to death. He was executed on January 29, 1940. Walker was paroled in 1960.

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.

Albert T. Lorch, a detective with the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office, was shot and killed while trying to arrest a burglar in Shaler on October 1, 1943. The suspect, Matthew Kozera, who had just been released from prison after serving time for robbery, fired the fatal shot and fled the scene.

Police encountered Kozera on October 10, 1943, in the Hill District. He was shot and killed by County Detective Walter Monaghan as he was being apprehended.

Tobias J. Brown, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed by Raymond Harrison during a bar fight in Hazelwood on August 23, 1941.

As Harrison was being placed in a patrol car, he drew a gun and shot Brown. Officer Joseph Boyle then shot and killed Harrison.