Published: January 19, 2006 11:45 pm      

DA deliberates ruling in fatal Berlin standoff

SOMERSET — Somerset County District Attorney Jerry Spangler is expected to decide next week whether state police were justified in fatally shooting a Berlin man during a New Year’s Day standoff.

Spangler said Thursday he is reviewing results of a state police investigation before making a formal ruling.

Until then, the sharpshooter who killed William Lee Leister, a 38-year-old state prison guard, remains on administrative assignment and cannot participate on the agency’s Special Emergency Response Team.

“I want to thoroughly review the police report so I have an understanding of all the facts,” Spangler said.

It appears likely Spangler will find that the shooting was justified, considering Leister engaged in a shootout with police. During the exchange of gunfire, a trooper was shot in the chest but saved by his bullet-proof vest.

The state police rifleman, whose identity has not been disclosed, will be eligible to rejoin the SERT team depending on Spangler’s decision, state police spokesman Jack Lewis said.

“He has been put on administrative duties,” Lewis said. “They don’t stay home. They come to work.

“The only thing he can’t do now is when the SERT team is activated, he won’t get sent out.”

Coroner Wallace Miller said he will await Spangler’s ruling before deciding whether to convene an inquest into the shooting.

Authorities have said Leister apparently wanted to die during the standoff, calling it “suicide by cop.”

The off-duty guard at State Correctional Institution-Laurel Highlands was distraught about a friend’s rejections of his romantic overtures; the breakup with his longtime girlfriend two months ago; and the prospect of losing his job and going to jail for a shooting rampage that precipitated the standoff.

State police said Leister was killed by the only two shots fired by the sharpshooter, who was positioned 61 yards from the suspect’s house on North Street in Berlin.

The 12-hour standoff began New Year’s Eve after Leister forced a car off a road near Confluence, shot a passer-by three times and abducted the car’s female driver.

Passer-by Larry Glover, 46, of Confluence, was treated at Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown.

The kidnap victim, Ashley Bittinger, 21, of Confluence, said Leister had bailed her out of jail a day earlier with $700 on a domestic violence charge involving her brother. Leister, she said, was upset she was not consenting to his advances.

Bittinger walked out of the home soon after the standoff began.

Nearly eight hours later, police said Leister burst through a second-floor bathroom door onto a roof, firing 19 rounds in just three seconds from a Chinese rifle similar to an AK-47.

One round struck the trooper who was wearing a bulletproof vest, while another injured a neighbor.



Kirk Swauger can be reached at 445-5103 or kswauger@tribdem.com.