Lets pass more laws in the wake of this shootout. :: 07/24/2013

On the way back from Gifford Pinchot State Park on Saturday night, we noted that several traffic signs were routinely ignored. One of us wondered aloud if perhaps putting up more signs would make drivers compliant. The concensus was that no, likely it would not.

In the followingstory, a man is dead, a State Trooper was shot (but thankfully not badly injured), and a 25 year old woman, already prohibited from owning firearms, is facing a list of charges that is significant. Please read the article, note the laws that were broken by the dead man and his younger girlfriend, and ask yourself one very telling question---"Would so much as even one more gun law, or any law for that matter, kept the two principals from committing this crime?"

Girlfriend of suspect killed after Latrobe standoff accused of supplying him guns

July 23, 2013 11:38 pm

Suspect killed, trooper injured after 18-hour standoff in Latrobe

By Molly Born / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The week before he went through with it, Scott Murphy had been talking about robbing a Latrobe pharmacy, his girlfriend told police.

All he needed was a gun.

So on Wednesday, Julian Faye Upholster, 25, stole two guns from her roommate and gave them to her beau, state police said.

A day later, Mr. Murphy, 46, would hold up the Precision Care Pharmacy with one of them and make off with several hundred Oxycontin pills, some of which the pair would share before Latrobe police arrived that evening to question him.

And on Friday he would be dead, killed after a 17-hour standoff with state police tactical officers, one whom he shot, authorities said. Mr. Murphy was shot several times, but it's unclear if his bullet or a trooper's was the fatal one.

Upholster, of Latrobe, faces robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery and receiving stolen property charges in one case, and illegal possession of a firearm, theft, firearms not to be carried without a license, and another count of receiving stolen property in the other. She was in the Westmoreland County Jail Tuesday on $155,000 bond.

According to a police criminal complaint, Upholster told investigators she drove the getaway car in Mr. Murphy's Thursday afternoon robbery.

When officers went to Mr. Murphy's Lloyd Avenue home about 7 p.m., Mr. Murphy refused to come out, barricaded himself in an upstairs bedroom and made "suicidal statements," police said.

State police tactical officers worked until late Friday morning to coax him out, and stormed the house twice. The standoff ended in Mr. Murphy's death after an exchange of gunfire.

Trooper Brian King, a SERT member and veteran of the Belle Vernon barracks, was shot likely twice and had surgery for an eye injury. He has been released.

Upholster told investigators that she stole the two guns, an AR-15 rifle and a Ruger .360* handgun, from her roommate on Wednesday and took them to Mr. Murphy's home.

Upholster pleaded guilty to robbery in 2008 and was barred from having guns, according to the complaint.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Monday.

* this was copied word for word from the PG. Please don't be surprised that Molly Born and the editorial staff of the PG don't know that a Ruger .360 would be hard to find.