Police: Fugitive shot by task force was carrying BB gun
PITTSBURGH – A fugitive charged with child sex offenses brandished what turned out to be an air gun before he was fatally shot Tuesday by members of a U.S. marshal’s-led fugitive task force who went to his home to serve an arrest warrant, authorities said.
Pittsburgh police Chief Cameron McLay declined to release details of the shooting, including how many shots were fired, how many law enforcement officers were involved or the agencies for which they worked, citing the need to protect a “very active investigation.”
The Allegheny County medical examiner’s office identified the dead fugitive as Leslie Sapp III, 47.
Sapp was charged with rape, corruption of minors and other crimes for allegedly molesting a girl under 14 multiple times since April 2011.
Officials with the U.S. Marshals office in Pittsburgh did not immediately return calls for comment or release a statement on the shooting. The marshal’s Western District of Pennsylvania Fugitive Task Force also includes city and state police, sheriff’s deputies from two Pittsburgh-area counties, and state parole and probation officers.
McLay said at a news conference city officers weren’t involved in the shooting, which occurred at about 7:15 a.m., but are investigating it because of where it happened. Representatives of the Pennsylvania State Police, Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Marshals Service also attended the news conference but didn’t speak.
McLay showed reporters a picture of the weapon the fugitive had, a Crosman BB pistol.
“This individual confronted our officers with this weapon, adopted, presented it in a manner consistent with what one would use when trained to use a handgun against officers,” McLay said. “The officers fired to defend themselves.”
Sapp’s home is located in the city’s Knoxville neighborhood, on a block that includes a handful of boarded up homes.
A neighbor told the Associated Press she heard someone pounding on Sapp’s door for several minutes beginning around 5:30 a.m. and then heard gunfire. The woman asked not to be identified and said she didn’t know Sapp. Authorities wouldn’t explain the apparent time discrepancy.
The criminal complaint against Sapp states the accuser first reported the incidents to police in May. The girl told police Sapp, described as a family friend, rubbed his genitals against her the day before she turned 10, the complaint said.
She said Sapp stopped when her mother returned from a trip to the store, the complaint said. She said he later had sex with her several times, including once after giving her marijuana.
The victim did not immediately report the incidents “because she was afraid of Mr. Sapp and thought that she would get in trouble with her mother,” the complaint said.
Online court records don’t list an attorney for Sapp in connection with those charges. His attorney in a previous criminal case didn’t immediately return a call.
Sapp’s criminal record includes a 1986 burglary conviction in Camden, N.J., for which he received more than 11 months in jail, and a guilty plea to a weapons charge and other crimes stemming from a 2012 traffic stop in Pittsburgh. He received three years of probation in that case in October 2013.