Jury selection begins in shooting that terrorized rural Pa. community
Jury selection began Thursday in a suburban Philadelphia courthouse 150 miles and a world away from where a sniper's bullets left a police officer dead and a rural northeastern Pennsylvania community enveloped in fear more than two years ago.
Eric Frein, 33, could face the death penalty if convicted of killing State Police Cpl. Bryon Dickson in September 2014. Police say Frein, described as a survivalist, laid in wait in nearby woods and shot Dickson as he walked toward his vehicle outside the police barracks in Blooming Grove. Another trooper was wounded, and the gunfire just missed a dispatcher who heroically ran to their aid.
The shooter then slipped away into the woods, prompting an intensive, seven-week manhunt involving more than 1,000 law enforcement officials. The barracks, about 35 miles east of Scranton, not far from the borders of New York and New Jersey, sits on the edge of thousands of acres of state woodland in the Pocono Mountains.
The search drew headlines across the nation, severely hobbled tourism in the region and brought road closures and other headaches to locals. Trackers at one point discovered a journal allegedly kept by Frein and found in a bag of trash at a hastily abandoned campsite. The journal's author described Dickson as falling "still and quiet" after being shot twice, the last time in the head.
Prosecutors haven't said much about a motive, but say Frein previously spoke disparagingly about the government. Frein pleaded not guilty, but his lawyers have not publicly detailed his defense. A judge has barred Frein from presenting evidence of insanity.
Frein, who was one of the FBI's 10 most-wanted fugitives, was finally nabbed by U.S. Marshals at a small, abandoned airport about 35 miles from the shooting scene. Police placed him in Dickson's handcuffs, and Frein was driven from the scene in Dickson's patrol car.
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Jury selection was moved out of Pike County because the community was so consumed by the shooting and the manhunt that followed.
Arlene Battista lives and works a few miles from the police barracks. She said she feels totally safe and comfortable now. But she remembers well the weeks of terror, when residents feared their homes would be targeted by a desperate killer on the run.
"I was petrified," Battista said. "I live on a tiny lane, not many houses. I would lock the door every time I stepped outside the house, even during the day. I was so conscious of everything around me."