Aliquippa officer on leave to grieve with family of slaying victim
An Aliquippa police sergeant was placed on paid administrative leave, a day after a 33-year-old woman was killed, because he and his family were her close friends, Aliquippa police Chief Donald A. Couch Jr. said Wednesday.
Sgt. Kenneth Watkins’ daughter spent several hours Sunday evening with Rachael DelTondo — at one point stopping for ice cream — before Ms. DelTondo was shot to death about 10:45 p.m. in her parents’ driveway in the 2100 block of Buchanan Street, the chief said.
“They’re devastated,” Chief Couch said of the Watkins family. “He needs to be home with his family, grieving with them and keeping them safe, and at the same time we’re also maintaining case integrity. So later on down the line, no one can say, ‘Well, he had access to information and reports, or detective conversations or hearsay at the station.’ It’s natural common sense.”
The paid leave began Monday and is “in no way” disciplinary, the chief said.
Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier said Sgt. Watkins and his juvenile daughter are not suspects in the homicide.
“She is not a suspect; she is a witness,” Mr. Lozier said. “You can’t have an officer in that department, a small department of 12 officers, you can’t have an officer who has a family member as a witness. He had to be given leave with pay for the integrity of the investigation.”
Investigators believe Ms. DelTondo was shot multiple times at close range and was the killer’s intended target, Chief Couch said. Ms. DelTondo was alone when she was killed, he said.
Mr. Lozier declined to confirm or deny reports that investigators believe Ms. DelTondo was killed by someone she knew.
A man who was once engaged to Ms. DelTondo — Frank Catroppa — was interviewed by police Tuesday, said his attorney, Stephen Colafella. Mr. Catroppa spoke with detectives for about an hour, his attorney said, adding, “Frank did not appear to be a suspect.”
The pair broke off the engagement nearly two years ago. Mr. Catroppa has not had any contact with Ms. DelTondo since they ended the relationship, Mr. Colafella said, and he has been dating another woman for several months.
Ms. DelTondo was a teacher with The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School for nine years until allegations surfaced in October that she had inappropriate contact with a teenage boy, at which point the school suspended her with pay.
Sgt. Watkins was one of two Aliquippa police officers who discovered Ms. DelTondo and the 17-yearold boy in a parked car at the end of a dead-end street at 2 a.m. Feb. 6, 2016. The car’s windows were steamed up when Officer Francis Conkle approached the car, but both Ms. DelTondo and the student said they were just talking.
No charges were filed, and the officers did not write any sort of formal report about the incident until about a year later, records show.
“When you are an extremely busy police department, incidents that occur don’t always get documented,” Chief Couch said, adding that the incident was considered a “non-issue.”
“The officers were able to see that there was nothing going on,” he said. “They were separated, nothing was happening, nothing was going on. They knew each other, and one of the responding officers was also in that circle of friendship; the kid was actually going to move in with one of the officers because he has a troubled mother.”
Chief Couch declined to say whether the teenager was planning to move in with Sgt. Watkins or Officer Conkle. Police did not report the incident to The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School at the time.
About a year later, Officer Conkle did write a report about the incident. That report, which appears to have been created in April 2017, was leaked to the media in October 2017 and prompted the Pennsylvania State Police to investigate Aliquippa police for improper use of law enforcement data.
Chief Couch said the officers decided to write the report after “someone caught wind of [the incident], circulated it.”
“So my assistant says, ‘OK, put it down on paper so they know what happened,’” he said.
An officer wrote up the report and stapled it together with several pages of confidential law enforcement records, including the Social Security numbers and driver’s license data for Ms. DelTondo and the teenager, Chief Couch said.
That packet of information sat on a desk in the police station for some time, Chief Couch said, until a member of the public asked for a copy of the incident report. That person, who was not named by Chief Couch, was mistakenly given the entire packet, including the confidential records.
“There was nothing malicious whatsoever,” Chief Couch said.
However, the leaked report was emailed to Ms. DelTondo’s employer, Mr. Lozier said.
“It was vindictively and anonymously emailed to her employer,” he said. “I told her employer that there was no charge following that [traffic] stop because no crime had occurred, but they suspended her anyway.”
State police launched an investigation into the leak in December and placed restrictions on how Aliquippa police could obtain some law enforcement records during that investigation.
“We were transparent about how it happened and when it happened when they interviewed us,” Chief Couch said. “Our suspension was lifted.”
The state police investigation ended in February, he said. The department is on probation for a year, he said, and is conducting internal audits to ensure state police data is not misused.
“On the very first [audit] we did, we caught one of our officers who inadvertently ran his own wife,” Chief Couch said. “He couldn’t remember his wife’s Social Security number, so he ran her name to get it. That officer had to write a letter explaining why he did it and he had to retake the [training] course. He did that. And everything is back to normal.”
Mr. Lozier, the district attorney, said the officer who released the confidential information was disciplined.
“The investigation regarding that report has long been closed,” Mr. Lozier said, adding later, “The state police concluded it wasn’t criminal, it was negligent.”
Chief Couch denied rumors that Aliquippa Mayor Dwan Walker ordered the officers not to write a report about Ms. DelTondo’s encounter with the teenager in the car and also denied rumors of a cover-up.
“I was asked that question when I was interviewed [by state police],” he said. “And no. Heck no. I’ve got the best boss in the world, he doesn’t want to know nothing.”
Mr. Walker did not return a request for comment Tuesday.