TodayMyers brothers acquitted of assault charges
Jury does find Andrew and Shawn Myers guilty of reckless endangerment.
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Article RatingA Cumberland County jury deliberated for several hours Wednesday before finding brothers Andrew and Shawn Myers not guilty of aggravated assault in an October 2007 incident in Hampden Township that damaged four police vehicles.
However, the jury did find both men guilty of fleeing to avoid apprehension and a consolidated count of reckless endangerment. They also found Andrew Myers, 25, guilty of one count of receiving stolen property and two of the four counts of institutional vandalism he was charged with, Shawn Myers, 28, was found guilty of two counts of receiving stolen property.
Throughout the trial, numerous law enforcement officers from the Hampden Township and Carlisle police departments testified about what happened in the parking lot of the Hooter’s restaurant the afternoon of Oct. 2 as they attempted to take the brothers into custody. The pair were wanted on felony warrant and knew it.
Several officers used the words “battering ram” and “aimed” to describe how Andrew Myers, originally of Dillsburg, drove a stolen silver 2001 Mustang Cobra. They said it appeared the Mustang came close to hitting a Carlisle officer as he was getting out of a marked police vehicle.
Two officers told the jury they pulled weapons and intended to shoot Andrew Myers if an intervening collision from a fourth police vehicle had not ended the threat the Mustang posed. A second Mustang, reported stolen from an Adams County dealership at the same time as the first, was found at the hotel where the brothers had been staying. Boxes of cigarettes bearing Shawn Myers’ fingerprints were found in the trunk.
“It doesn’t take a lot of time to hurt somebody,” said John Dailey, Cumberland County senior assistant district attorney. He argued that the brothers were willing to do whatever it took to get away. He also pointed out that two different officers reported the brothers each said afterward that if they could have gotten away, they would have carjacked a vehicle on the Carlisle Pike and continued fleeing.
“They both had the same plan,” Dailey said. “This was a team.”
But Linda Hollinger, Cumberland County senior assistant public defender, who represented Andrew Myers, argued that while the brothers were trying to flee, they could not be convicted of aggravated assault, because there was no proof they had a specific intent to injure any of the officers.
“We don’t convict people of crime based on somebody’s perception of what happened,” she said. Law enforcement officers are “hypervigilant,” she said, and while citizens want them to be so, there can be some downsides to that.
“Andrew did something really dumb,” Hollinger said. “Pennsylvania doesn’t have a crime of being dumb.”
Attorney Allen Welch, representing Shawn Myers, originally of Dover, struck a similar tone, saying he understood that all the officers were “outraged, and they should be.”
But, Welch said, what happened was not a planned attack but something that occurred in a matter of seconds.
“Things just went crazy,” he added.
The brothers, who appeared relaxed throughout the trial, showed no reaction upon hearing the verdicts, but Welch said afterward that Shawn Myers agreed with him that jury was pretty fair.
“We knew he was guilty of some things,” Welch said. “We thought there were some things tacked on, and the jury sorted through those.”
“The jury did a good job,” Dailey said, noting that prosecutors felt strongly that when police officers are put in that kind of situation, the case should be made to a jury.
“If it was going to be not aggravated assault, a jury was going to have to say that,” Dailey said.
Meanwhile, he said, “I’m glad that we’re going to keep them off the streets for a while.”
How long they will spend in prison depends on whether the judge imposes concurrent or consecutive sentences, Dailey said, but because both have criminal histories, they are looking at a minimum of several years behind bars.
Andrew Myers’ bail is set at $200,000 and Shawn Myers’ at $150,000, Dailey said, and both also have detainers from the state and York County.
The brothers will be sentenced by Cumberland County Judge Edward Guido at 9:30 a.m. Aug. 12.
