By Rich Cholodofsky
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
LOWER BURRELL, Pa. — The younger brother of the man who gunned down a Lower Burrell patrolman threatened to shoot a city police officer in January, a Westmoreland County prosecutor alleges.
On Oct. 12, Charles Post shot and killed Officer Derek Kotecki on a city street. Authorities said Post, 33, then likely killed himself before he was shot by two other police officers.
Police said Post was a fugitive who was wanted for his alleged participation in a shooting incident 10 days earlier. He hid in the rear of a white Jeep in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen along Greensburg Road before he shot and killed Kotecki, 40, who had gone there to arrest him.
During a court hearing on Monday morning, Assistant District Attorney Leo Ciaramitaro said that Post’s 30-year-old brother, Christopher, threatened to kill another officer during a confrontation in a bar three months after Kotecki’s shooting.
Post allegedly said, “I’m going to get an AK-47 and kill a Lower Burrell cop,” Ciaramitaro said after the hearing.
“We have a confidential informant ready to testify about that,” Ciaramitaro told Judge Rita Hathaway.
The witness was never called. The judge did not need that testimony to revoke Post’s probation and detain him in the county jail, pending a sentencing hearing.
Hathaway ordered that in addition to a pre-sentence investigation, Post undergo a mental health evaluation and be screened for drug and alcohol abuse.
“If he threatened police, I take that very seriously,” Hathaway said.
District Attorney John Peck said an investigation found that the alleged threat against Lower Burrell police by Post was made at a bar in Allegheny County. After Post was jailed for the probation violation, additional investigations were halted, Peck said.
Christopher Post was in court yesterday for a parole revocation hearing. State probation officers contend they found up to five guns in the Post family’s Lower Burrell home, which they searched after threat allegations surfaced.
In 2007, Christopher Post pleaded guilty in four separate drug cases. He was sentenced to serve one to two years in prison and three years on probation. He was paroled in January 2010.
Post is not permitted to possess firearms as a condition of his probation, which was scheduled to run through Jan. 15, 2013.
Post denied he made any threats to police. He said he did not know that his father had the guns in the family home. His father, also named Charles Post, testified that he uses the gun as a “professional hunter and licensed hunting guide.”
“It’s all false information. It was all blown out of proportion,” the younger Post testified.
Post said he lived with his girlfriend and had just moved back to his parents’ home in Lower Burrell. He said he moved away from the city after Kotecki was killed.
Copyright 2012 Tribune Review Publishing Company