Montco DA clears Lower Merion officers in shooting of ex-cop accused of child rape
The officers believed Francis Collier was shooting at them as they attempted to arrest him on a warrant filed in Delaware County, officials said Thursday.
Two Lower Merion police officers were justified in shooting a former Delaware County police officer while attempting to arrest him last month, officials said Thursday.
Francis Connell Collier, 38, who previously served as a part-time officer in Morton, was wanted on charges of rape and other sex crimes involving children at the time of the shooting, which took place Feb. 25 in front of his home on Old Lancaster Road.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said Thursday that as the officers went to arrest Collier, they heard a gunshot from within his Jeep, and saw a bullet exit the vehicle’s rear window.
The officers, whom Steele did not identify, believed they were being shot at and fired on the vehicle.
“This was a dangerous situation where police were attempting to arrest an armed man on an arrest warrant,” said Steele. “Our investigation determined the facts of this case justified the use of deadly force by police officers.”
Inside the car, investigators found Collier shot three times in the head, once from a self-inflicted gunshot, Steele said. It was not clear from Collier’s autopsy which of the three shots killed him.
Beside him was a bulletproof vest, a Sig Sauer semiautomatic pistol, two rifles and a second handgun, investigators said.
The criminal case against Collier began late last year, authorities said, when Delaware County investigators learned that he may have sexually abused children.
Two women told investigators Collier had touched them inappropriately in the early 2000s, when they were 5 and 6 years old and Collier was a teenager, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. The women said the abuse began in 2001 and 2003, the affidavit said.
Years later, the women said, they learned that Collier worked with the Delaware County District Attorney’s child abuse task force, which investigates sex crimes against children. They said they grew worried when they saw social media posts showing Collier posing with children, the document said.
When investigators interviewed Collier about the allegations in early December, the affidavit said, he failed a polygraph test, but told detectives he “never intentionally touched the girls inappropriately.”
County investigators referred the case to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office that month because of a possible conflict of interest, the affidavit said. State investigators later interviewed people who said the women had told them of the abuse years ago when they were children, and prosecutors filed the criminal charges against Collier just hours before his death.