Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Jay Splain will be promoted to corporal, effective April 12.
Splain remains assigned to PSP’s Member Assistance Program, which exists to provide confidential assistance to personnel and their immediate family members who are experiencing personal, emotional, psychological, or related medical problems.
Read More: After 4 killings, Splain’s PSP admin duty assignment: Mental health counselor
Splain had been involved in the deaths of two Lebanon County residents, whose estates received a cumulative $3 million in settlement funds from PSP over separate federal civil lawsuits arguing that use of deadly force had not been justified in either shooting. LebTown reported in-depth on the particulars of both incidents in a November 2022 article.
Charity Thome of Richland was fatally shot March 16, 2020, by troopers Splain and Matthew Haber after a high-speed, early-morning vehicular chase that began at a home along Heilmandale Road in North Lebanon Township and ended in a field along King Street in Jackson Township. Splain and Haber were cleared in the Thome shooting by Lebanon County District Attorney Pier Hess Graf, whose husband was Splain’s supervisor at the time of the shooting. Hess Graf later disclosed that she received a private reprimand from the Disciplinary Board of the state Supreme Court which had received an ethics complaint from the Lebanon County branch of the NAACP over her handling of the investigation.
A lawsuit filed in November 2020 by Philadelphia-based injury law firm Kline & Specter on behalf of Thome’s estate was settled for $1.25 million in July 2024.
Read More: Estate settles with PSP for $1.25M over March 2020 killing of Charity Thome
As first reported by The New York Times, the Thome shooting was the third of four fatal shootings by Splain over the course of 15 years.
In November 2021, Splain’s fourth fatal shooting was 40-year-old Jonestown resident Andrew Dzwonchyk at the home of his girlfriend’s mother in Union Township.
A $1.75 million settlement in a federal civil lawsuit filed by the Philadelphia civil rights law firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing and Feinberg over Dzwonchyk’s death was reached with the state on Sept. 1, 2022, three days after Lebanon County District Attorney Pier Hess Graf cleared Splain of any criminal wrongdoing.
Pennsylvania State Police also settled with the estate of Anthony Ardo, who had been fatally shot by Splain and trooper Eddie Pagan in a 2017 Northampton County incident, for $125,000 in 2023.
The MAP program is one of the first of its kind to use organized, confidential, peer assistance by, and for, its own personnel in law enforcement. Splain had been previously reported by LebTown to be employed by MAP as a regional coordinator. In that role, Splain would coordinate services and provide critical incident stress management for events like line-of-duty deaths, child death investigations, and police shootings.
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