PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — On New Year’s Eve, two officers were summoned to a house in Larimer after a woman called 911 asking for help, but they left when a man came to the window and said things were okay.

Twenty hours later, investigators say that man — subsequently identified as Anthony Brown – took his own life in North Point Breeze during a standoff with police. The woman caller, Ka’Sandra Wade, was found murdered in her apartment.

Now, Wade’s neighbors want to know why police didn’t do more.

“I don’t want to point fingers, but I would hope that in the future they would talk to the person who made the call,” one neighbor said.

According to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office, Wade died of a gunshot to the head. Dr. Karl Williams cannot say an exact hour of her death or whether Wade was alive or dead when police arrived.

KDKA’s Andy Sheehan: “She was murdered around that time?”

Dr. Williams: “Somewhere around that time is all we can say.”

Beth Pittinger, of the Citizens Police Review Board, says the police should not have left the scene until they had spoken with Wade and made sure she was all right.

“If you’re that person who called, you know they’re coming, you hear them there,” said Pittinger. “You hear the bad guy saying we don’t need you. Imagine her horror.”

KDKA’s Andy Sheehan spoke with Fraternal Order of Police President Michael LaPorte who defended the officers and called the criticism against them as “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

“They are professional officers — trained and experienced — based on their observation that night, legally they could not have gone any farther,” he said. “There were no screams and no commotion. The law only allows us to go so far.”

But Pittsburgh police have launched an internal investigation to determine if procedures were followed. And now they’ve been joined by the Allegheny County District Attorney and the Citizens Review Board.

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Pittsburgh Police Investigating Procedure After Murder-Suicide (1/5/13)
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