by Patrick H. Moore
Just because a place is off the beaten track, “far from the madding crowd,” does not necessarily mean that it’s a safe place to raise the family. In fact, gun violence exists in outlying areas just as it does in our blighted urban “shooting galleries.” Ross Township in rural Pennsylvania found that out the hard way Monday evening when Rockne Newell, a disgruntled resident nursing a longstanding grudge over property rights, burst into a town council meeting and shot and killed three individuals and wounded four others.
Holly Yan of CNN writes:
Ross Township in rural Pennsylvania is the kind of place that, in the words of one county official, is “never in the newspaper.” Monday night changed that. Police said a resident with a grudge rained hell at a town council meeting. By the time he was subdued, Rockne Newell had fatally shot three people and wounded several others, police said.
Newell’s murderous fury was triggered by a feud over property rights with the township’s board of supervisors that had apparently been going for 18 years. According to the Pocono record, last year a county court ordered him to vacate his Monroe County property. The property was later put up for sale.
“If I lose this property, I have nowhere else to go,” he told the paper in June. What they’re doing to me, what they’ve been doing to me for so long, it’s wrong.”
The problem apparently began when Newell got a building permit from the township to build a storage structure on his property. The structure appears to have been built without incident but then — around 1995 — Newell built a home there without taking the steps to get a proper permit. Neighbors complained about the property, and there was even one report of Newell storing human fecal matter in buckets.
The township eventually ruled that he was improperly disposing of sewage with no septic system or permit for one. Newell’s explanation was that he couldn’t afford septic hookup fees. After Newell finally vacated the property in 2012, it was put up for sale.
On Monday the monthly supervisors’ meeting had just begun when Newell marched toward the municipal building in the village of Saylorsburg with what is quaintly described as a long gun and fired through the windows.
From his vantage point inside the building, Pocono Record reporter Chris Reber, who was covering his first board meeting, saw plaster flying off the walls.
“Witnesses would later tell me they saw pictures exploding away from the walls,” he wrote in a first-person account for the paper.
Firing through the window appears to have emboldened Newell; he stormed into the building, confronted the 15 startled officials and residents, and started blasting away.
Then, according to Pennsylvania State Police Capt. Edward Hoke, Newell left the building, returned with a handgun, and started firing again. There is no explanation as to how long an interval elapsed while he went to rearm
One of the victims was shot because he pushed an intended female victim out of the way placing himself in the line of fire. Newell was then caught off-guard by Bernie Kozen, the director of a local park preservation group. Chris Reber explains:
“Bernie bearhugged him and took him down. He shot (the assailant) with his own gun.”
The police, however, report that two people tackled the suspect.
“It’s certainly courageous what they did, and they absolutely would have saved lives,” state police officer Lt. Robert Bartel said.
Two of the three deceased victims were identified as James V. Laguardia, 64, and Gerard Kovic, 53. They were both residents of Saylorsburg. The third victim, David Fleetwood, was a Chestnuthill Towenship Supervisor. The shooter, Rockne Newell, was treated at a local hospital and then released back into police custody.