NEW PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Stunned residents watched with binoculars and cell phones as a battering ram smashed open the front door and officers with automatic weapons charged into a row home Monday on the borough\u2019s main street.<\/p>\n
After a standoff of more than four hours, officers found a suspect deceased inside 83 Valley Street.<\/p>\n
Trooper Ethan Brownback, public information officer at Troop L in Reading, confirmed that the deceased, 44-year-old Kevin Carlos Cole, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.<\/p>\n
Police have not revealed precisely when the suspect took his own life, but a post-mortem CT scan was scheduled to be performed Tuesday in the Schuylkill County Coroner\u2019s facility in New Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
The incident unfolded over a tense period that disrupted life in the borough and surrounding towns.<\/p>\n
Reported to state police at Frackville as a domestic violence incident around 10 a.m., responding officers were fired on multiple times by the suspect as they entered the house, state police reported.<\/p>\n
A woman who lives at the address got out safely. Three children who live there were apparently not at home when the incident occurred.<\/p>\n
None of the officers fired upon were injured, but the incident evolved into a full-scale operation involving the Troop L Special Emergency Response Team, or SERT, a SWAT-style unit.<\/p>\n
Route 209, Valley Street in New Philadelphia, was shut down between Port Carbon and Middleport, a distance of around five miles. Fire police closed adjoining roadways, bringing transportation to a halt in the affected area.<\/p>\n
Pottsville Area School District modified its after-school transportation program, ferrying high school students to St. Clair Elementary School for pickup by family members.<\/p>\n
Two state police helicopters hovered over the incident command center at the New Philadelphia Post Office. A whirring sound could be heard as drones zipped back and forth over the scene.<\/p>\n
Police, some armed with shotguns and automatic rifles, cordoned off the area around the house, less than a block from Holy Cross Catholic Church, awaiting the arrival of the SERT unit.<\/p>\n
Around 12:30 p.m., an armored vehicle moved into position near the house, the end one in a row of four, directly across from the old Silver Creek State Bank building.<\/p>\n
SERT officers in camouflaged uniforms took up positions with direct line of sight to the affected house. One officer crouched in a side doorway to First United Methodist Church, which sits above Clay Street, and offered a clear view of the front door at 83 Valley Street.<\/p>\n
Around 1 p.m., a loud siren rang out. On a loud speaker, an officer said \u201cKevin, we know you\u2019re in there,\u201d and urged him to come out the front door with nothing in his hands.<\/p>\n
The negotiator said the police did not want anything bad to happen, and the charges could be resolved. The suspect was also urged to answer his phone.<\/p>\n
A resident monitoring the scene with binoculars reported seeing a drone go into the house and come out.<\/p>\n
Soon after, several volleys of shots were fired into the house. To bystanders, there appeared to be no response from inside the house.<\/p>\n
SERT officers rushed through the front door around 2 p.m., and emerged a short time later.<\/p>\n
It became apparent to onlookers that the suspect was dead.<\/p>\n
State police said no one but the suspect was in the house.<\/p>\n
Police departments from Frackville, Minersville, Orwigsburg, Saint Clair, Schuylkill Haven, Shenandoah, Tamaqua and the Schuylkill County Sheriff\u2019s office responded to the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Stunned residents watched with binoculars and cell phones as a battering ram smashed open the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":645966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,5295,728,115533,50,1448,2830,1311,62458,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-645965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-america","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-new-philadelphia","tag-news","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116205882241829883","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}