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Canonsburg officer and constable killed in New Eagle added to national police memorial

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Scott Bashioum

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Peter J. Kromer

A trip to the National Law Enforcement Memorial tonight will be bittersweet for friends and family of a Canonsburg police officer killed when he and other officers were ambushed while answering a domestic call in November.

Officer Scott Bashioum died in Canonsburg Hospital a short time after he was shot while answering the call in the early morning hours of Nov. 10. Also shot was Officer James Saieva, who was taken to a Pittsburgh hospital for treatment. He returned to duty earlier this year.

Bashioum’s name was placed on the wall along with a Pennsylvania state constable for Washington County. Constable Peter J. Kromer of Pittsburgh was shot and killed while attempting to serve an arrest warrant in New Eagle Jan. 19, 1915.

The 52-year-old Bashioum and Saieva responded to a home at 120 Woodcrest Drive. The two officers were ambushed with shots from a high-powered rifle fired from a second-floor window by Michael Cwiklinski. Canonsburg Sgt. Don Cross, the responding supervisor, arrived on the scene moments later. Seeing the fallen officers, Cross moved his patrol vehicle through the line of fire to get to Bashioum. With the help of Cecil Township police Sgt. John Holt and Peters Township police Sgt. Matthew Collins, Bashioum was removed from the scene and taken to the hospital. Cross drove a second patrol vehicle to get to Saieva.

Cwiklinski, 47, shot and killed his 28-year-old wife, Dalia Sabae, who was three months pregnant, before turning the gun on himself. Sabae had a protection-from-abuse order against her husband.

“It is going to be a bittersweet day,” Canonsburg police Chief Alex Coghill said of a candlelight service at the memorial in Washington, D.C., tonight. “Scott is the first Canonsburg officer that I know of to die in the line of duty. This will be my first experience with it.

“As much as we are looking forward to seeing the memorial, we have to remember the reason why we are there,” the chief added. “And that pulls you back to reality.”

Coghill and Bashioum’s family will be joined in Washington by Cross, Saieva and Canonsburg Officer Matthew Tharp, in addition to several members of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 22.

While in the nation’s capital as part of National Police Week, Coghill said he will be attending a class dealing with how to handle a loss in a department. Police Memorial Day is Monday, and Coghill expects to attend that ceremony.

Kromer, 31, had been serving as a constable in Washington County for only six weeks when he attempted to serve an arrest warrant on a man accused of assaulting his brother. Kromer was approaching the victim’s home in an attempt to get information on the suspect’s whereabouts.

Kromer walked onto the back porch of the New Eagle home when he was shot in the neck and leg. He was able to walk to a store across the street, where he collapsed and died. Four people were later arrested by Monongahela police, but only two were indicted by a grand jury. A fifth person was arrested that July and charged with homicide.

Kromer was identified during research of fallen officers by Rocky Geppert, a volunteer case investigator and historian for both the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial of Allegheny County and the Pennsylvania chapter of Concerns of Police Survivors, which researches line-of-duty deaths. Geppert said he was unable to locate any of Kromer’s family.

“Lots of our research is done by using websites like newspapers.com and ancestry.com,” Geppert said. “We spend hours of research on these websites.”

Geppert said he uses terms like “policeman killed” during the research on the newspapers.com site.

“We are constantly finding new officers almost every other day,” Geppert added. “We use the standards set by the National Law Enforcements Memorial in Washington, D.C.”

Bashioum and Kromer were among 394 names added to the memorial this year. Bashoium is one of 143 officers killed in the line of duty in 2016. Kromer is one of 251 officers who were killed in prior years and had been forgotten by time until the memorial’s staff and volunteers found records of their service. Last year, five police officers from Washington and Westmoreland counties killed in the line of duty decades ago and found by Geppert during his research had their names added to the memorial.

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