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George H. Shearer, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed when he attempted to enter a boisterous wedding party on May 12, 1914. Three other officers were wounded. The Hungarian wedding was in Hazelwood.

Stephen Popp was arrested. Popp, who argued that the killing occurred during a melee in which he was being assaulted by another police officer and that he was unarmed and had not fired a weapon, was acquitted of murder on November 20, 1914.

Martin F. Windt, a Pennsylvania State Constable, was shot and killed by Henry Rukowski in West Homestead on December 29, 1913. Windt had apprehended Rukowski for assaulting his parents when Rukowski escaped, shot Windt, and fled.

Rukowski then killed Estella Yukubauskas, the mother of his girlfriend, and Ignatz Baukowski, to whose home Yukubauskas fled after being shot. Rukowski’s mother committed suicide on January 2, 1914.

Rukowski was arrested more than six years later, on March 17, 1920, in Youngstown, Ohio. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15-19 years in prison in June 1920 for killing Windt.

Allegheny County Deputy Sheriff Harry Exley and Pennsylvania State Police Officers Jack Smith, and John Williams, were shot and killed by strikers during the infamous Pressed Steel Car Company strike in McKees Rocks, on August 22, 1909.

State Police, mounted on horseback, were referred to by strikers as “Black Cossacks” for their close ties to the company. In a heavily armed effort to put down the strike, twelve to twenty-six people are estimated to have been killed that day. Exley was targeted by strikers for his mistreatment of a family being evicted from company housing.

Martial law was declared the next day. The strike against the Pressed Steel Car Company, which manufactured railroad cars, began on July 13 and ended on September 8. Pressed Steel employed a mostly foreign-born workforce of 6,000 who lived and worked in conditions described as “industrial peonage,” including very low wages, dangerous workplace conditions (estimates of a worker death per day), and sexual exploitation of worker wives and daughters. The plant was referred to at the time as “the slaughterhouse.”

No trials were held for the killings of these officers or any of the others who were killed.

Thomas J. Sullivan, a Pennsylvania State Constable, was shot and killed on July 12, 1907, after he and a fellow officer confronted two burglars in East Pittsburgh. Sullivan apprehended one of the suspects and was escorting him to the police station when the man pulled a gun and shot him.

Both men fled and were never apprehended.

Bruce A. Patton, an officer with the Coraopolis Borough Police Department, was shot and killed on December 10, 1905, while arresting Edward Wright.

Wright fled and was never apprehended.

James H. Sheehy, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed by Silas Carter while escorting him to the police station in the Hill District on May 18, 1902. Carter fled.

Carter was reported to have been killed in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in 1904 before being apprehended in Pittsburgh in 1906.

At trial, Carter claimed he acted in self-defense while being beaten. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Patrick Edward Fitzgerald, a 45-year old, Canadian-born detective with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot and killed on April 12, 1901, while investigating the robbery and murder of Thomas Kahney by Edward and John Biddle and Walter Dorman.

The Biddle brothers were convicted and sentenced to death. Despite having testified against the Biddles, Dorman was also convicted and sentenced to death.

In a now infamous incident, Ed Biddle seduced the jailer’s wife, Kate Soffel, and enlisted her in their escape. After disabling her husband, Soffel and the Biddles fled into a snowstorm on January 30, 1902. Unable to travel far or fast, they were apprehended by police in Butler County and shot to death.

Soffel subsequently served a short prison sentence for her role in the escape.

Dorman’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

John F. “Benjamin” Evans, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot by Edward J. Coffey on August 4, 1885, while trying to arrest him outside a saloon at 6^th and Penn Avenue. Evans died two days later.

Coffey, the son of a prominent family, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. After failing in his efforts to use his family’s resources to overturn his conviction or his sentence, Coffey committed suicide on January 24, 1888, the eve of his execution.

This was the first case in which the killing of a police officer in Allegheny County resulted in a first degree murder conviction.

James McKeag, an officer with the Turtle Creek Police Department, was killed on April 9, 1901, in Braddock when attempting to serve a warrant on a man for horse stealing.

The man was apprehended on a bridge. As McKeag served the warrant, the man attacked him, beat him, and threw him from the bridge.

After a lengthy delay, Alexander Ferguson was arrested and is reported to have confessed to police. He and three others, James Davis, Charles Wilson, and James Hussey, were charged with murder.

All were released after Ferguson’s confession was rejected as unreliable. No subsequent arrests were made.

Charles Metzgar, an officer with the Pittsburgh Police Department, was shot on May 1, 1898, and died on May 11. The shooting occurred while trying to arrest John Szojak, a “drunken Hungarian,” during a fight at Second Avenue and Greenfield Avenue in Hazelwood.

As in the Weimar and Wiggins cases, Szojak drew a gun while being escorted by Metzgar. The frequency of such occurrences in this era suggests the lower levels of police professional and training that prevailed.

Szojak was convicted of second-degree murder on July 11, 1989, the lesser conviction again being attributed to the defendant’s drunkenness.