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Man did not know his shooter
Girard
Police said the man who was shot in the doorway of his apartment in December identified the suspected shooter and told detectives he did not know the man.
Girard detective Capt. John Norman said the suspected shooter, 26-year-old William Kehler IV, asked for another man before shooting 39-year-old Jeffrey Carpenter, leaving no link between the two and adding another chapter to the mysterious events that occurred Dec. 27.
Originally, Norman thought an interview with Carpenter would pull together all the players in the ordeal.
Instead, Carpenter told Norman he didn’t even know the man the shooter asked to see and noted that he was shot while closing the door to his apartment.
Norman said Carpenter’s description of Kehler, who later killed himself in the driveway of his Chestnut Ridge Road home in Hubbard Township, matched the clothes Kehler wore but Carpenter also told police he did not get a good look at the shooter’s face because the shooter wore a hood.
Norman said he is still waiting on a ballistics report that would compare the bullets and casings in the Carpenter shooting to the handgun used in the suicide.
In Warren, police suspect Kehler also was involved in a home invasion earlier that day.
Wayne Mackey, a Warren police detective, said a 20-year-old Warren woman of Brier Street Southeast, told police she knew Kehler and that he was the man who tried to rob her at gunpoint.
She told detectives Kehler hit her on the top of the head after she told him she had no money.
According to the police report, which did not include Kehler’s name, the suspect also had the woman escort him to a neighbor’s home. It was this neighbor, a 59-year-old man, who called the Warren police after seeing Kehler, openly carrying a handgun and the woman walk to his home.
The Brier Street incident reportedly occurred at about 1 p.m., approximately a half hour before the Girard shooting, leading Mackey to surmise that afterward Kehler headed straight to Girard.