Former part-time cop on trial for homicide had guns, money
State police seized an arsenal of new rifles and handguns worth nearly $11,000 from the house of former a Mon Valley police officer who is standing trial in Washington County Court this week for a homicide.
Trooper Charles Morrison testified today suspect David J. McClelland, 38, also had nearly $2,500 in his car and house at 15 School St., Coal Center, money believed to have been stolen from his neighbor before his father stabbed to death the 92-year-old woman during a robbery in July 2011 in her home in the Granville section of California Borough. Evidence also was shown that he had a vauluable cache of new tools in his shed.
McClelland is on trial before Judge John DiSalle on charges of criminal homicide, conspiracy, burglary, receiving stolen property, dealing in the proceeds of illegal activities and aiding in the consummation of a crime. His father, David A. McClelland, pleaded guilty to killing Evelyn Stepko, and his stepmother, Diane McClelland, was found guilty in the homicide in February.
During testimony in the younger McClelland’s trial today, prosecutors played a taped statement he gave to state police in July 2011 in which he admitted his father had been supplying him with $2,000 a month and that he knew his father had been stealing the money from Stepko.
He had been working for about three weeks as a part-time police officer in Washington Township, Fayette County, when he was arrested in the case.
Read more of this story in tomorrow’s Observer-Reporter.