A Pennsylvania State Police corporal has been charged with five counts of reckless endangerment in connection with the fatal shooting of Trooper David Kedra during a firearms training exercise last September.
Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman announced the Feb. 10 arrest of Cpl. Richard Schroeter, 42, who waived his preliminary hearing and was released from custody on $50,000 unsecured bail.
State police and the district attorney’s office spent four months investigating the case, which was then presented to an investigating grand jury. The DA instructed jurors to consider more serious charges including homicide and involuntary manslaughter, but jurors recommended that the prosecutor proceed only with the lesser reckless endangerment counts.
In a printed statement, the DA’s office reported that the jury “found insufficient evidence that Schroeter consciously disregarded human life, and, therefore, could not establish probable cause that he committed involuntary manslaughter.”
However, the jury also found that “Schroeter breached routine, yet critical safety protocol by failing to visually and physically check to ensure that his weapon was unloaded, failing to obtain confirmation from another that his firearm was not loaded, and failing to point his weapon away from the direction of everyone present,” including Kedra.
Kedra, a Burholme native with two years of service on the state police force, was among five troopers being trained on a new firearm at the department’s Safety Training Campus in Plymouth Township, near Conshohocken, on Sept. 30 when Schroeter fired the shot that killed him. Schroeter was “discussing the trigger mechanics” of the gun when he fired a live round that struck Kedra, the prosecutor’s office said.
Kedra, 26, suffered a wound of the abdomen and was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he died that night. He was a Presentation BVM, Roman Catholic High School and Temple graduate who was engaged to be married. He grew up on the 7200 block of Claridge St. and had recently bought a home in East Coventry Township, Chester County, with his fiance.
Schroeter is scheduled for a Common Pleas Court arraignment on April 1. A trial date has not been set. ••
