Centre County District Attorney Bernie Cantorna said on Friday he was not previously aware of new allegations, contained in a lawsuit filing this week, about the former State College police officer who fatally shot Osaze Osagie in 2019.
Cantorna has sent the amended complaint in the Osagie family’s federal lawsuit to state police at Rockview for review and investigation.
“Once that process is complete, my office will report back to the public,” Cantorna said. “As always, the main objective of the District Attorney’s Office is to serve and protect our community through the fair and ethical pursuit of justice.”
Cantorna cleared the three officers of wrongdoing following a state police investigation in May 2019, saying they were in a “life-or-death situation,” and attempting to back away when Osagie charged at them with a knife in the narrow hallway outside his apartment. The state police Heritage Affairs Section also found racial bias did not play a role in the shooting of Osagie, who was Black.
The amended complaint filed Monday in the Osagie family’s lawsuit alleges that the former officer who shot and killed Osagie, M. Jordan Pieniazek, was “mentally unstable and violent,” and “unfit for duty.” It also claimed a now retired captain had received information about Pieniazek’s alleged “excessive drinking and domestic abuse” but did not take steps to ensure Pieniazek was fit for duty in the days leading up to the shooting.
“During the original investigation, the District Attorney’s office was not made aware of the allegations in the amended complaint,” Cantorna said on Friday, adding that all the evidence and information used to support his conclusion on the original investigation is available in a report on the DA’s website.
Andrew Shubin, one of three Osagie family attorneys, said sending the new allegations to the state police for investigation “is necessary but it’s not sufficient.”
“The state police either ignored or weren’t interested in this information in the initial go-round,” Shubin said. “We want to make sure the investigation is done by people who don’t have a vested interest already. If they screwed this up then someone else should be doing it.”
He added that there should be civilian oversight to the investigation.
“I think the public really is looking for civilian oversight here,” he said. “They’re looking for an entity to be involved that is not police. The public and the Osagie family already endured two years of the State College Borough hiding the names of the officers and now we know why.
“We’re not confident that stopping with the state police is going to yield a fair, unbiased result.”
Pieniazek, along with Sgt. Christopher Hill and Lt. Keith Robb, went to the 29-year-old Osagie’s Old Boalsburg Road apartment on March 20, 2019 to serve a mental health warrant. When Osagie charged at them with a knife in the narrow basement hallway outside his apartment, Hill deployed a Taser but it was ineffective. Pieniazek then fatally shot Osagie while retreating backwards.
The amended complaint claims that a family friend notified State College police in January 2019 about Pieniazek’s alleged drinking and domestic violence and Pieniazek entered rehab.
Capt. Chris Fishel, who later chaired the internal department review that cleared the officers involved, “continued to receive troubling information from an eyewitness relating to Pieniazek’s mental state while he was in rehab,” the lawsuit claims.
The complaint alleges Pieniazek had returned to work just days before the shooting and that he had been drinking again and acting erratically.
After the shooting, a witness contacted Fishel to express “concern regarding… Pieniazek’s increasingly dangerous behavior,” according to the amended complaint. Fishel allegedly told the witness not to take any action, because it would “complicate things.”
The internal review board’s report, which was written by Fishel, contained no witness information related to Pieniazek. The report documents one use-of-force complaint against Pieniazek that did not involve injury and was deemed unfounded.
In a rare public comment on pending litigation, State College Mayor Ron Filippelli and Borough Manager Tom Fountaine issued a joint statement on Wednesday denying the new allegations and saying the borough has been transparent.
“This amended complaint, like the original complaint before, contains false claims, and half-truths, while also leaving out critical facts and context to understanding the incident, the background and the persons involved,” Filippelli and Fountaine said.
They added that the borough and the officers would respond “in detail to the inaccuracies contained in the amended complaint,” when they file an answer in the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania.
Pieniazek, who had been a borough police officer since 2008, left the department when he made a disability claim a few months after the shooting, according to the amended complaint. Fishel retired in September 2020 after 29 years with the department.
Pieniazek, Fishel, Hill, Robb and the borough are named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Advocacy Groups Call for Resignations
The 3-20 Coalition, the advocacy group formed following Osagie’s death, and the State College NAACP both called for the resignations of Cantorna and borough officials after the new allegations were revealed.
Demonstrating outside the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte on Friday afternoon, 3-20 Coalition members called for an independent investigation and for Cantorna to resign.
In a statement, coalition members alleged that the borough’s disclosure of the officers’ names after nearly two years reveals “just how much was being hidden from the public, for the purpose of protecting the officers from any culpability…” They accused the borough and law enforcement of being complicit in a “cover-up.”
“Through each one of the so-called independent investigations… it was clear information was being withheld from the community and these investigations were far from transparent,” the statement said.
Coalition members said Cantorna “failed in his duties to the public,” adding that another state police investigation would be “non-independent.”
In a statement issued on Thursday, the State College NAACP expressed “profound concern and outrage at the recent revelation that the State College Police Department withheld critical information…” It called the statement from Filippelli and Fountaine “insulting and shameful.”
The chapter called for the resignations of the two officers still with the department, as well as Cantorna, Fountaine and State College Police Chief John Gardner.
“Our community citizens have repeatedly called for justice and truth from the SCPD and the District Attorneys’ office,” the statement said. “In light of this new information, their promise of transparency rings hollow and false. For the past 22 months, these parties collectively withheld vital information pertinent to the case: That Officer Pieniazek was himself a severely distressed man who was unfit to carry the gun that he used to fatally shoot Osaze Osagie during what was supposed to be a mental health check.”
