The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

August 18, 2008

Hunted Sharon man was unarmed, cops say

By Courtney Anderson

SHARON. HERMITAGE — The Sharon man police spent an hour hunting for Sunday after it was reported he was armed, impaired and intent on hurting himself had no guns with him when police found him and isn’t facing any charges, Sharon police Chief Mike Menster said Monday.

Police said they at first thought Army 1st Lt. Anthony Kennedy had guns with him in his pickup while they were on the lookout for him, but it turned out that he didn’t.

Menster said Kennedy has not been charged with anything and isn’t likely to be.

“We don’t have any evidence that he tried to harm anyone else or threatened anyone else,” Menster said.

Kennedy did not hurt himself either, Menster said.

The initial call to police at 7:07 p.m. said that Kennedy, who served two tours in Iraq, was barricaded in his Hawthorne Place home with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a pistol, Menster said.

When police went to his home, Kennedy wasn’t there. The soldier’s wife then arrived and was talking to him on a cell phone, Menster said.

Kennedy had told his wife he had taken pills and had been drinking alcohol and that he had shot himself, Menster said.

Police found Kennedy in his pickup in a driveway at Adelaide Street and Ashland Drive in the Patagonia section of Hermitage, police said. He was taken into custody by Hermitage police without incident.

Kennedy was taken to the hospital of Sharon Regional Health Center for treatment and evaluation, Menster said.

“It boils down to a person in emotional crisis who took some medication and alcohol,” Menster said. “He was taken to the hospital for help.”

Menster said police had to deal with the incident as they would with any possibly suicidal individual. He said police are called at least once a week for such situations.

“It’s very common,” Menster said. “We did nothing more or less in this case, but the initial allegations of firearms being involved went out over the scanner.”

Those reports and what Menster called “miscommunication” with a reporter resulted in errors in a story about the incident in Monday’s Herald.

Police found Kennedy’s weapons Sunday night at his home, where the rifle was disassembled and secured, Menster said. Police took the guns from the home.

Kennedy has four children and the family moved to Sharon from Oregon in 2007, according to Herald files.

He has served in the Army for 13 years and recently completed his second tour in Iraq, where he served as a night battle captain at LSA Anaconda airbase outside Balad, Iraq.

Menster said he couldn’t speculate about whether Kennedy’s time overseas had anything to do with Sunday’s incident.

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