No charges in shooting death of Jamaican immigrant in rural Pa.
Authorities said Peter Spencer and his fiancee were already under investigation by the ATF and Pennsylvania attorney general's office at the time of his shooting death.
As night fell and the bonfire grew higher, a fun-filled day at a remote cabin along the Allegheny River in Venango County devolved into chaos, according to authorities.
Peter Bernardo Spencer, a Jamaican immigrant from Pittsburgh, was shooting his AK-47 assault rifle into the December sky and growing angry and erratic, witnesses told investigators. Spencer -- who, like some of the witnesses, had been drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, and taking psychedelic mushrooms -- began telling the others “he was a god,” investigators said, and demanded their car keys and phones as they expressed concerns for their safety.
When Spencer allegedly pointed the rifle at his friend, the man who invited him on the weekend getaway in the outdoors, that man drew a handgun and killed him, investigators said. The shooter told investigators he believed Spencer was intent on killing him and the three other guests who were hiding. On Tuesday afternoon, the Venango County district attorney said that man, who was not identified, was justified in shooting Spencer in self-defense.
“He did not have to wait for a gunshot to fire at him,” Shawn White said of the shooter at an afternoon news conference Tuesday in Venango County. “He did not have to wait for a verbal threat.”
Spencer’s case drew international headlines since his death Dec. 11. Spencer is Black and the four others at the cabin at the time of his shooting are white. His family believed he was the victim of a “modern-day lynching.” Cpl. Aaron Allen, of the Pennsylvania State Police’s Heritage Affairs team, said there was no evidence of a hate crime or bias in the case.
“They were here for a camping trip,” Allen said.
Spencer’s family met with investigators Tuesday morning and were walked through the decision not to charge the shooter with homicide, Allen said. He declined to characterize their reaction to the news.
“There was a lot of emotion,” Allen said of the meeting.
Paul Jubas, an attorney representing the family, said the family disagreed with the decision but weren’t surprised.
“This is the type of behavior we have seen from the PA State Police and Venango County District Attorney from the outset,” Jubas wrote in a statement.
On Twitter Tuesday, Spencer’s father said: “We will squeeze the venom of corruption of whom is involved in the killing and covering up ...”
Investigators found 31 spent cartridges from Spencer’s illegal AK-47 at the scene. He had also brought an AR-15 assault rifle. White said Spencer and his fiancee were already under investigation, prior to his death, by both the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the state Attorney General’s Office, possibly for ghost guns or trafficking. Spencer’s fiancee, who was not identified, told investigators she did not see him take any guns with him when she dropped him off at the cabin. White said Spencer’s fiancee purchased the AR-15.
Though the shooter told investigators he had consumed mushrooms, there was no evidence of the drug in his toxicology report. Spencer’s test revealed psilocin. White said psilocin is a hallucinogen that can cause panic attacks and psychosis. During the news conference, White said Spencer told the others he had never eaten psychedelic mushrooms before. There was no evidence, White said, of any erratic behavior in Spencer’s past.
When asked whether the shooter or other witnesses were impaired during Spencer’s shooting, White said they were “alert times three” when investigators interviewed them at the scene.
“Nobody seemed to be under the influence of anything at the time the interviews were conducted,” White said.
White said evidence, including photos from Spencer’s cell phone, shows that members of the group were having a “good time” that day. They went off-roading and visited a waterfall, but later, witnesses describe a night of escalating fear and panic.
Spencer had been asking, then demanding, the group gather more firewood to build a bigger bonfire. The shooter told investigators the others were scared and he asked Spencer to put the gun down several times, but he “couldn’t be reasoned with.” When a man identified as Witness 1 tried to go to his car, investigators said, Spencer made him get on the ground. When Witness 2 tried to leave in a bus he had driven there, investigators said, Spencer took his keys. Witness 1′s cell phone was found in Spencer’s pocket when investigators processed the scene.
Investigators said Spencer asked the shooter several times where “the girl” — Witness 3 — had gone. The shooter allegedly lied to Spencer, telling him she was in the cabin when she was really hiding under a bed in the bus. The shooter told investigators that Spencer pushed him, demanding to know where the woman was, then pointed his AK-47 at him. That’s when the shooter emptied his weapon, hitting Spencer nine times.
White said the shooting probably took 2 to 2.5 seconds, the bullets hitting Spencer’s body as he twisted away. Two of the nine shots entered his back, the autopsy report found, while two more entered Spencer’s buttocks. He said that a gunshot to Spencer’s face was nonfatal and that the death was “not an execution.” He was found facedown, not far from the smoldering fire, when investigators arrived.
“He was not running away,” White said.
Jubas said the family, accompanied by well-known pathologist Cyril Wecht, would be having their own news conference next week. Wecht had previously balked at the self-defense claim.
White, during Tuesday’s news conference, took issue with how rural Venango County and his office were portrayed in the media and on social media over the last three months. He called it a “geographic war..”
“No one involved in this investigation, either as a suspect, a victim, or a witness was even from Venango County,” he said. “Everybody came in from some other county.”
The investigations into the firearms and drugs at the scene are ongoing, White said.
Spencer was born and raised in Kingston and first moved to the United States when he was 16, then again in 2013, to live with family in Pennsylvania. His parents said he worked in construction and dreamed of opening a restaurant.
“My son was not perfect, but he did not like anyone around him who did not work,” Spencer’s mother told the Gleaner, one of Jamaica’s largest newspapers. “He worked hard, and he was always encouraging others, motivating them to do better.”
Spencer was expecting a child with his fiancee when he was killed.