YEAR OF THE BULLET

Rural Areas See Deadliest Violent Acts

The headlines tell just part of the story:

Arrest made in city shooting

Off-duty Philadelphia policeman involved in High Street shooting

Violence erupts in city

Downtown shooting wounds man

Penn College policeman shot

Those are just some of the stories that made news during 2004, a year when
12 shootings -- a near record in recent memory -- occurred in the city.

In nine of the shootings, 10 people were wounded and treated at
Williamsport Hospital. All of the victims survived. No one suffered gunshot
wounds in three of the other shootings.

Meanwhile, four homicides occurred this year in Lycoming County -- all of
them outside the city, all victims dying of gunshot wounds.

"There certainly seemed to be more firearm-related deaths this year than in
the last four years," County Coroner Charles E. Kiessling Jr. told the
Sun-Gazette.

In addition to the four homicides, at least nine people died of
self-inflicted gunshot wounds this year, Kiessling said.

But headline-grabbing gun violence was not limited to the city. It
occasionally invaded the rural communities throughout the region, and when
it did, it was deadly.

The New Year wasn't even an hour old when Kiessling had his first homicide
of 2004.

Shortly before 1 a.m. Jan. 1, he was paged to the Jersey Shore Hospital
emergency room, where he declared dead a 21-year-old woman who was shot by
her boyfriend in their Avis-area home. He pleaded guilty to third-degree
murder in early December.

In rural Bradford County, two sheriff deputies were gunned down March 31 in
Wells Township while trying to serve a warrant on a 27-year-old man, now
awaiting trial on two counts of homicide.

In the same county, two men were shot to death in as many days the
following month. In one case, a 39-year-old man shot another in a bar near
New Albany on April 22. The suspect fled to Philadelphia, where he was
arrested. He is awaiting trial.

The next day in Towanda, a 57-year-old man shot and killed a 50-year-old
man who was trying to enter his apartment. No charges have been filed in
that case.

Sullivan County had its first homicide in more than five years on April 8
when a 74-year-old man was found shot to death in his workshop next to his
Nordmont home. A 20-year-old man from Wilkes-Barre, whose parents were
building a summer home next to the victim's property when the shooting
occurred, has been arrested and is awaiting trial.

"It's dangerous for us to assume that we can escape the violence by living
and working in rural communities," Sullivan County Coroner Wendy Hastings said.

"Living in smaller communities often lulls us into a false sense of
security that this type of violence can't hit home. However, as we have
seen with the tragedies in Bradford County and here, we know that such
violence can indeed happen (in small towns)," Hastings said.

"To think otherwise, is unrealistic," she added.

In the city, at times there seemed to be no escaping the violence.

The first city shooting occurred on Jan. 3 when one man shot at another
man's pickup truck at East Fourth and Academy streets. No one was injured.

The second shooting occurred on Feb. 20 when an off-duty Philadelphia
police officer entered his estranged wife's apartment at 309 High St. and
shot a 44-year-old man who was in bed with her.

The 40-year-old police officer has been terminated from the department and
is awaiting trial on charges of aggravated and simple assault.

The third shooting occurred on March 21 when a group of people invaded a
home in the 200 block of Campbell Street, wielding baseball bats, clubs, a
knife and a handgun, which was fired.

A brawl followed, and while no one suffered a gunshot wound, several people
were hospitalized after being beaten or stabbed. More than a half a dozen
people were arrested and are awaiting trial on riot and assault-related
charges as a result of the melee.

In another case, a 22-year-old man was hospitalized for several days after
being shot outside Mango's Tropical Cafe, 100 Pine St., on March 28. No
arrest has been made.

Nine days later, two men were shot at Third and Memorial avenues just
before 6 p.m. The victims fingered an 18-year-old man as the alleged gunman
and signed statements identifying him as the shooter.

The suspect was arrested in a matter of weeks, but at a preliminary hearing
in late June, both victims changed their tune and testified that they could
not say that the suspect was in fact the gunman.

Often times, investigators run into a stonewall and are unable to make any
arrest because the victims are unwilling to provide truthful information,
city Capt. Keith Bowers said.

"We clearly believe that some of the victims or witnesses know more than
they are providing to investigators. They are not always fully cooperative,
largely because they have a preference to attempt to handle things on their
own," Bowers said.

In many of the city shootings, the victims are reluctant to be truthful
because they are involved in selling drugs, Bowers said.

When asked why there were so many shootings this year, Bowers' reply was
this: "In a word, drugs. A high proportion of them are in some way related
to drugs."

Because drug dealers sometimes get shot, the last thing they want is police
to start to investigate them when something goes terribly wrong, Bowers said.

"People who are involved in selling drugs are not normally going to tell us
that drugs was the reason for getting shot. They will come up with another
reason, or simply tell us, 'I don't know why I was shot,' " Bowers said.

Old Lycoming Township police Cpl. William Solomon knows all too well the
frustration officers experience when a victim is less than truthful.

On the night of Sept. 25, a 23-year-old man who lives outside Philadelphia
showed up at the Williamsport Hospital with a gunshot wound to the right leg.

He claimed he had been shot in the township, in the 1900 block of Lycoming
Creek Road.

After being released from the hospital, the man refused to visit the
shooting scene with police. The man who drove the victim to the hospital
also was uncooperative, Solomon said.

When officers inspected the reported crime scene, they found no evidence of
a shooting. "It was very frustrating," Solomon said. "This was a year when
we were certainly plagued with shootings, but there have been other years
where we saw a lot more violence, more stabbings, more beatings and
murders," one veteran city officer who also asked that his name not be
printed, said.

"The shootings always draw everyone's attention. The beatings and stabbings
often get forgotten real fast," said the officer.

Bowers said that when he joined the police department 20 years ago, there
were not only far fewer shootings, "but we also had more cooperation from
victims."

In 1984 and 1985, city police reported only two incidents each year that
were classified as aggravated assault with a gun.

In 1992 there 11 such classifications while in 1994 there were 10 and the
following year there were 14. There also were 14 aggravated assaults with a
gun in 1997.

"It's not necessary that there be a shooting each time that a crime is
classified that way. Some of those cases may very well have been
gun-pointing incidents and not shootings. I would be surprised if each case
was a shooting," Bowers said.

"However this year, every incident that was classified as an aggravated
assault with a gun was in fact shooting," he added.

Bowers said the last two city shootings this year were drug-related.

A 19-year-old Luzerne County man was shot in the buttocks while trying to
buy drugs Oct. 12 on Kramer Court. No one has been arrested.

A 29-year-old Philadelphia man was shot in the back in the 600 block of
Second Street and taken to Williamsport Hospital on Dec. 1. No one has been
charged. Police were getting so little cooperation from the victim in that
case that three days after the shooting, he sneaked out of the hospital and
has not been seen since.

"There is no question that we're seeing a lot more gunplay out on our
streets today than ever before. And the younger criminals today are more
quick to pull a gun," said another veteran city officer.

That is exactly what happened shortly after midnight on April 27 when a
19-year-old man pulled out a handgun and shot Pennsylvania College of
Technology Patrolman William T. Chubb twice in the abdomen in the 1000
block of Vine Avenue.

Robert E. Johnson of West Third Street was nabbed within hours at a motel
outside Lewisburg. He pleaded no contest to attempted homicide and was
sentenced in October to state prison.

Ten weeks after the shooting, Chubb, 32, was able to return to full duty.