Evolution of a Story

Evolution of a Story

I.
A Greenville man suspected of being involved in a string of armed
robberies at convenience stores over the weekend was shot and killed
at about 7:45 p.m. Tuesday outside his apartment after a confrontation
with the Mercer County Critical Incident Response Team.
CIRT members were serving an arrest warrant on Jeffrey Alan Anderson,
30, of 17 College Ave., Greenville, on charges including robbery filed
Tuesday at District Judge Ronald E. Antos’ Farrell court by Southwest
Mercer County Regional police officer Kevin J. Wherry.
According to state police, they also searched Apartment 2 of the house
after being issued a search warrant.
During the execution of the warrants, Anderson failed to obey police
commands and attempted to back over police with his car, prompting
CIRT members to shoot at him, state police, who are leading the probe
into the shooting, said.
Anderson was struck by at least one round and fatally wounded,
according to police.
Over the weekend there were four convenience store robberies.
The first happened at 10:38 p.m. Friday at Standard Market in Masury,
according to Brookfield police. The second and third happened within
30 minutes of each other between 2 and 3 a.m. Saturday — the second at
2:15 a.m. at McQuaids in Farrell and the third at 2:45 a.m. at Circle
K in West Middlesex. The fourth was at 10:31 p.m. Sunday at Veado’s
Mini Market in Hempfield Township.
Police suspected the crimes were linked and involved men who used long
guns. Cash and cigarettes were taken during the robberies.
Because Anderson was killed, the case against him is listed as
inactive in online court documents posted early Wednesday.
“This is an on-going investigation being conducted by (state police),”
Cpl. Douglas R. Maxwell said in a news release.

II.

From about 8 p.m. Tuesday until 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, Jeffrey Alan
Anderson’s friends and family knew he was dead, but officials gave
them little inkling as to how or why he was killed.
His wife Serena, eight months pregnant with Anderson’s son, was
accompanied by a couple friends and sobbed behind the police tape in
the parking lot of the Greenville Sheetz, searching for a way to get
closer to the College Avenue apartment where they lived.
His father and step-mother, Jeffrey Alan Anderson Sr. and Rebecca
Anderson, of West Salem Township, arrived about 9:30 p.m. in shock.
The rushed beneath the cordon but were stopped by police in the middle
of Shenango Street with a couple others who tired to slip through the
barricade.
Rebecca Anderson could be seen sobbing in the middle of the street as
police tried to keep them away.
“They wanted us to go out and calm down,” the elder Anderson said. “I
said ‘How are you going to do it (calm down) if it’s your son?’.”
What they knew was gathered through word-of-mouth as the Greenville
area buzzed with news of the shooting.
“I heard the cops were serving a warrant to him and they said he was
trying to run,” he said. “He was in and out of trouble, but that’s no
reason to shoot him.”
“I’ve got to wait and find out. They won’t let me go down or nothing,” he said.
At about 10 p.m. police cordoned off an area in a parking lot south of
Shenango Street and Greenville firefighters brought chairs and bottled
water for the family members and their friends.
They sat and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
At about midnight, after initially declining to be interviewed, the
talked to the media.
“They won’t talk to us,” Anderson Sr. said repeatedly.
He spoke frankly about his son and the younger man’s troubles with the law.
“He was on disability,” the father said, and he was on probation after
his latest stint in jail.
“He was shot in the driveway,” he said he’d heard.
At about 12:30 a police officer approached and talked briefly with the family.
“He said the cops shot him, I guess,” Anderson Sr. said “He said it
kind of looks like that’s what happened.”
Friends and family members sobbed loudly as two wreckers appeared on
the road and were let through the cordons at about 12:45 a.m.
Police drove Serena Anderson closer to the scene, confirmed her
husband was dead, and questioned her for more than an hour as
concerned friends and family wondered aloud where she’d been taken.
West Salem Township Constable???? arrived at about 1 a.m. and spoke to
the family, telling them to forget rumors about the incident and to
wait until authorities completed their work.
“He’s had a hard life, he was in and out of jail,” Rebecca Anderson
said. “I thought this was his break, with his wife and baby.”
“My brother was a good, kind-hearted person,” Elizabeth Anderson of
Atlantic said. “What I don’t understand is all of this happened at
7-7:30, it’s 1:30, it doesn’t take that long to tell the family.
“It’s ridicules it’s taking them that long to get him out of there,” she said.
Police never did tell the family more.
At about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday State police trooper Jason Olayer
approached the area where family members were talking to the media and
told reporters “We don’t have all the facts now.”
He confirmed police were investigating Jeffrey Anderson’s death.
“He’s the only person that was harmed,” Olayer said.
He refused to tell the family more and directed them to call state
police Wednesday morning.

III.
They were going to name their son Nicholas Alan Anderson, Serena
Anderson said, hours after her husband Jeffrey Alan Anderson was
gunned down Tuesday night by the Mercer County Critical Incident
Response Team outside their Greenville home.
“Now it’s probably going to be Jeffrey Alan Anderson III,” the
21-year-old widow said through tears.
Mrs. Anderson, eight months pregnant with the boy and suffering from
diabetes as a result of the pregnancy, sat on a metal folding chair in
a parking lot surrounded by police tape and shared her story.
Before they met last June, Anderson had been in-and-out of trouble with the law.
According to online court documents, Anderson had been numerous
convictions for burglary dating back to 1999 and in 2005 he had a
run-in with police that ended with him being shot in the shoulder on
Hazen Road in Sharpsville near Buhl Farm park after an incident
involving several police departments.
That wound was self-inflicted, reports at the time indicated, although
Anderson later claimed that police shot him.
He served about 4 years in prison for that incident, his family said,
but after being released last year he’d made strides for the better.
“He was ready to do right,” his uncle, Jim Anderson said.
He and Serena married Dec. 6, 2010 and shortly thereafter she found
out she was pregnant.
Since then, “he has turned his life completely around,” Mrs. Anderson said.
“I was the one who kept him out of trouble,” she said.
“I’m with him every single day and now I don’t know where I’m going to
go,” she said.
Her grandmother lives in Atlantic and she was staying there for the
time being, but other family members live in Wisconsin, where the pair
wanted to relocate, but couldn’t because of Anderson’s probation, Mrs.
Anderson said.
They’d struggled with car trouble — an oil leak — and on Tuesday
afternoon drove to his grandmother’s house on Fredonia Road to borrow
her car, Mrs. Anderson said.
They drove back separately, with Anderson apparently a few minutes ahead of her.
When she arrived on College Avenue, “all of them SUV cop truck things
were in the parking lot” across the street from their apartment, she
said.
“I know for sure I heard two and may have heard three gunshots,” she
said. “And I stopped and all the cops unholstered their guns and said
to back up.”
She parked at Sheetz.
Eventually, the police told her Anderson was dead.
“They showed me a picture of Jeffrey and said ‘Is that your
husband?’,” she said. “(They said) ‘I’m sorry to tell you this but
he’s deceased, he died.”
“They asked me a whole bunch of questions,” she said.
They included queries into their financial situation and if he drank
or used drugs, which she said he didn’t.
“They said ‘Do you know what he does between the hours of 2 a.m.
and...” her voice trailed off.
She said she didn’t, she slept then.
Because of her diabetes, she wanted to get into her house but
couldn’t: the door was locked and the keys were in the car that
Anderson had been driving.
He ended up in the car at the bottom of a ravine on the bank of the
Little Shenango River, she said, although police didn’t say where the
car or the body ended up.
As authorities prepared to clear the scene about 2:30 a.m. a flatbed
tow truck hauled the car away in the darkness of the alleyway behind
Greenville Medical Center.
Mrs. Anderson was able to look into the bedroom window of the
apartment and she said it appeared to be ransacked from the police
search.
“My whole room was like tore apart,” she said.
She’d been told “something about a search warrant, but there didn’t
tell me what for,” she said.
“Still, really I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “I’m still in
shock about it.”

IV.
Police shot and killed a Greenville man suspected in a series of armed
robberies as they attempted to arrest him Tuesday night at his home.
Jeffrey Alan Anderson, 30, of 17 College Ave., Apt. 2, was shot in the
head as police said he attempted to run over members of the Mercer
County Critical Incident Response Team, authorities said Wednesday.
Anderson was backing his car up when he was shot and the vehicle ended
up at the bottom of a steep ravine north of his home.
Mercer County Deputy Coroner Robert L. Snyder said the head shot
killed Anderson and Erie County Forensic Pathologist Dr. Eric Vey
ruled Anderson’s death a homicide after he performed an autopsy
Wednesday in Erie.
Snyder referred further comment to state police, who are handling the
probe because the shooting involved a Mercer County police officer and
they act independently of local authorities.
State police held a news conference Wednesday, but offered few details
about the shooting and would not say if Anderson was armed at the
time.
“He did have a known violent criminal history,” said Trooper Herbert
Rieger of the Butler Barracks.
Court documents revealed Anderson was suspected in participating in
four armed robberies in the Mercer County area over the weekend.
Distinct tattoos captured on surveillance video and clerk descriptions
led police to Anderson, according to affidavit filed in District Judge
Lorinda Hinch’s Mercer office.
Mercer County Critical Incident Response Team was asked by Southwest
Mercer County Regional police to serve the warrant, according to
Hermitage Police Chief Patrick McElhinny, who is president of the CIRT
board.
“This was considered a high risk arrest warrant service,” McElhinny said.
Anderson had been in trouble with the law before and had been released
from prison last year, according to family members who said he’d been
trying to turn his life around.
“He was in and out of trouble, but that’s no reason to shoot him,” his
father, Jeffrey Anderson Sr. said.
His pregnant wife Serena, who said she heard the shots that killed her
husband, said she didn’t know if Anderson was involved in the
robberies.
“I was the one who kept him out of trouble,” she said early Wednesday
morning. “I’m with him every single day and now I don’t know where I’m
going to go.”
“He was ready to do right,” his uncle Jim Anderson said.
Hermitage lawyer David Ristvey was retained by a police union to
represent the interests of the CIRT member who shot Anderson. The
policeman has not be identified.
“We fully expect the shooting to be cleared, the shooting to be
justified and within policy,” Ristvey said. “My understanding is this
was an intentional attempt to run over the officer.”
Formed by the Mercer County Police Chief’s Association, CIRT is a
tactical team that acts as the area’s special forces team and is
composed of officers from several local departments.
After shooting Anderson, police searched his apartment near the
overgrown ravine that’s strewn with old tires and now marked with a
rectangle of left-behind police tape where it appears Anderson lay
dead for almost eight hours as police from several departments
processed the scene.
They were looking for the rusted, pump-action, long barrel black
shotgun police allege Anderson used in at least one of the robberies,
shoes, a black shirt, faded jeans, a dark blue bandana decorated in
white, cut-off black gloves, a black jacket with the letter “P” on the
right shoulder, a long white T-shirt and a white 2000 Plymouth Neon
sedan, according to the search warrant application signed by District
Judge Hinch.
According to online court documents, Anderson, formerly of Sharon, was
charged with numerous burglaries dating back to 1999, and in 2005 he
had a run-in with several police departments that ended with him being
shot in the shoulder on Hazen Road in Sharpsville near Buhl Farm park.
That wound was self-inflicted, reports at the time indicated, although
Anderson later claimed that police shot him, family members said
Tuesday.
He served about four years in prison for that incident, his family said.
This is the second fatal shooting involving a county police officer
since at least the mid-1960s, according to the encyclopedic
recollections of Senior Common Pleas Court Judge Michael J. Wherry and
retired District Attorney James P. Epstein.
Expect the investigation to be comprehensive, Epstein said.
In March 2009 state police shot and killed Walter J. McGarvey Jr., 45,
after he fired on them outside his home in New Hamburg.