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FROM A1Continued from A1now, but hopefully it’s going to calm down.”An average yearly homicide rate is five per 100.000 people, said Dennis Giever, associate professor and chairman of the criminology department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.Bedford County, with a population of 49,000, is edging toward twice the national average.In comparison, Cambria County with a population of less than 153.000 has had three murders to date this year, said District Attorney David Tulowitzki.A rash of armed robberies hit this year, especially at banks in Cambria. Most of them have been solved.‘‘For this past year, that was our biggest problem,” Tulowitzki said in a telephone interview from his office at Cambria County Courthouse in Ebensburg. “The main issue was the armed robberies.”Cambria expects to end the year with about 2,900 adult criminal cases.Somerset, with a population of 80,000, has had no homicides to date. This figure is outside the 40 killed when Flight 93 went down near Stoystown on Sept. 11, said District Attorney Jerry Spangler.While Somerset expects to have nearly 1,200 criminal cases by year’s end, by and large the cases involve bad checks, alcohol, drugs and actions related to intoxication.But Giever urged Bedford County officials, who expect to have about 600 criminal cases, to stay calm, because it’s highly improbable that this high rate of homicide will continue.“The problem is they are looking at the rate over a short period of time. You can really base a trend on a couple of months or one year,” Giever said in a telephone interview from his Indianaoffice. “I don’t doubt that the police can establish that the murder rates in Bedford County are equal to that of Los Angeles or any other large city.”The most recent homicide and certainly the most baffling is the Nov. 30 beating death of Dana L. Gates, 31, of Kimmel Township.Also attacked was her 31-year-old boyfriend, Lorin Burket, who survived.The attacks have state troopers sorting through a host of leads in a case that has provided little information for public consumption.In mid-June, George Thomas Trentini, 56, of the1100 block of Rocklick Hollow Road in New Paris was shot to death in his home.Police believe the killer was Susan Carol Bettencourt, 39, of New Paris, who took her own life that day with a gunshot to the head. She was found dead in her car on a side road near Sarah Furnace Road in Imler.The relationship between the two has never been determined.On Jan. 1, police were called to Bean’s Cove Road in Southampton Township to investigate the shooting of a Maryland man.Charles Adrian Sullivan, 52, of Cumberland was charged in the New Year’s shooting death of Terrance Michael McElfish, 56, a Bedford County native.Sullivan was convicted Sept. 11 of voluntary manslaughter in McElfish’s death and sentenced in November to six to 15 years in a state prison.Giever said that declining crime rates nationwide have changed how statistics are perceived.“The reality is the homicide rates have gone down since 1991 and are now as low as they were in the 1960s,” Giever said. “But the largest proportion in the change has been in larger cities and the crime rate in rural areas has been a flat line.”Most homicides have traditionally occurred with handguns and this type of murder hasdropped off drastically. Giever said.But in rural areas with a shotgun or two in nearly every house for hunting, things take on adifferent perspective.Krauss agrees with the analysis, especially inBedford County.“We always have shootings in Bedford County We could have five murders. It all depends on where the bullet hits,” he said in an interview at the barracks on Route 30 between Bedford addEverett.The county needs to look for a reason for the trend toward a higher crime rate, Giever said.“The difference between aggravated assault and homicide is how quickly they get to the hospital,” he said. “And because medical techniques have improved we’re able to save a lot more peo-pie.”The homicides are without question crimes of passion, Krauss said: “They’re not contract murders, they’re not gangland-style murders, it’s notthat kind of stuff.While authorities wait for crime to taper off, they’re working without pay at home at night andon their days off. ?“We’ve always had these crimes. It just so happened that the murder and the armed robberips hit a peak at the same time and will start leveling off, at least that’s my hope,” Krauss said.A leveling off of crime is what Diehl is banking on.Despite being a part-time district attorney, Diehl is finding himself dealing with county cripi inal matters more than ever.“There may be some weeks where I work §0 hours a week in the district attorney’s office, biff then there are other weeks where I work 60 houf s in the office. I just pretty much figure it’s a fulltime job.Giever is confident the crime cycle in Bedford County will soon start swinging the other way.“When crime is high, police become more diligent. I wouldn’t panic. These are anomalies add hopefully things will regress back to where they’ve been in the past.”“We always have shootings in Bedford County. We could have five murders. It all depends on where the bullet hits.”Sgt. Daniel Krauss,state police
Newspaper Details
Johnstown Tribune Democrat
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, US
Mon, Dec 17, 2001
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Amy B.
USA 07 Aug 2020
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