Quiet college town rattled by first slaying in 25 years

KUTZTOWN, Pa. - There is a sleepy,

Back to the Future

movie-set vibe about Kutztown University, where tree-lined, two-lane, lamp-lit Main Street runs straight through the heart of the campus, surrounded by cornfields.

Down the road is quaint Pop's Malt Shoppe; up the hill, NAPA Auto Parts; in between, lots of small shops and the stately brick-and-limestone buildings, circa 1900, where students live and classes are held. Want a tight-knit college town, 5,000 residents, 12,000 students? Hit the brakes, you're here.

For 25 years, it was a town free of homicide. Until Friday.

To be sure, on "Thirsty Thursdays," as students have nicknamed them, Main Street takes on a decidedly different air.

Then the taverns overflow with students and a blue-collar crowd from surrounding urban areas like Reading and Allentown, who come for the action and the rowdy ritual of an early start to the weekend. When the bars let out at 2 a.m., downtown "can feel like a drunk people parade," said Sara Chandra, 19, a sophomore from Hershey majoring in criminal justice.

Investigators have yet to say what role alcohol may have played in the beating death of Kyle Quinn, 19, a Kutztown sophomore from Warminster, Bucks County, whom police found lying on lower Main Street early Friday. An autopsy was completed yesterday, but the determination of the cause of death awaits toxicology results, the coroner said.

Authorities have, however, said the three Allentown men charged in the death - brothers Terry D. Kline Jr., 22, and Kenneth R. Kline, 21, and their friend Timothy R. Gearhart, 23 - were seen drinking at Shorty's, a cavernous Kutztown bar, before the 2:30 a.m. assault.

All three were being held on aggravated-assault charges; bail was set at $10 million each. Berks County District Attorney Mark Baldwin said he anticipated filing homicide charges after the autopsy results were in.

Court records indicate this isn't the first run-in with the law for any of the men.

In 2004, Gearhart pleaded guilty to simple assault in Allentown and was ordered to pay a fine and do 30 hours of community service. A few months later in Maryland, he was charged with assault, weapons offenses and disorderly conduct. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and received 60 days. The rest of the charges were not pursued.

Terry Kline was charged in 2004 with disorderly conduct for fighting in Whitehall Township and paid a fine. Kenneth Kline entered a program for first-time offenders after Allentown police charged him with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct last year.

Erin Cooney, 27, a spokeswoman for Shorty's, declined to comment on any aspect of the men's presence at the bar, but said the establishment took security seriously, deploying more than a dozen beefy bouncers on busy nights and patting down patrons at the door with a metal-detecting wand.

Quinn, the son of Warminster Board of Supervisors Chairman Leo Quinn III, graduated from William Tennent High School in 2006 and transferred to Kutztown after spending his freshman year studying business at Pennsylvania State University's Abington campus. He had been at Kutztown less than two weeks.

According to the arrest affidavits, the Klines and Gearhart, along with friends Derik Houser and Andrew G. Weber, drove to Kutztown to carouse at Shorty's in a celebration of Terry Kline's 22d birthday, which was Thursday. Houser and Weber, who authorities say appear to have witnessed the attack but did not participate, have not been charged.

The five left the bar at closing, and, with Houser behind the wheel, they drove a few blocks through an alley to the intersection of Main and Noble Streets, where the Klines and Gearhart jumped out and began harassing a group of people on the sidewalk, and - with raised voices - squared off with one young man, according to the affidavits.

Police said Houser had told them that Terry Kline punched the man and then the three jumped back into the car. A Kutztown police squad car rolled up before they could get away.

Witnesses said Quinn had been at the off-campus apartment of his older brother, Dennis, a Kutztown senior, and had been walking back to his dormitory, Bonner Hall, when the attack produced the borough's first homicide since 1982.

Quinn was airlifted to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, where he died at 3:36 a.m.

"It's something that doesn't happen around here. But when you have 12,000 students and all the other types of people coming, I guess you've got to expect it," said Jackie Brown, owner of the Jackie & Daughter florist shop, which did a steady business yesterday selling bouquets that mourners laid, along with votive candles, at the scene of the assault.

One mourner, Patty Boyer, a Kutztown homemaker, went by the makeshift memorial with her 5-year-old son, Jacob. She didn't know the victim. She has no affiliation with the university. The sadness of the situation just touched her heart, she said.

A longtime resident of Kutztown, Brown, the florist, said she had watched the school grow in 20 years from a small teacher's college of 1,500 students to a state-university affiliate with more than 12,000 on the rolls.

Although she has had her share of fallout from Thirsty Thursdays, including a broken plate-glass window two years ago, she said the town-gown relationship was a happy one, adding, "but now our little town is just shaken up with all of this."

Student Erica Franklin, 18, a freshman, said the university was handling the situation as well as it could.

"It was unsettling at first, but the university president sent out e-mails as information was being gathered, so that was comforting," she said.

The university said that, in addition to using the borough police force and campus security guards, it wanted to initiate another layer of security via a new town watch to consist of borough representatives, university students and staff.

At the Airport Diner on the edge of campus, patrons were abuzz with the unpleasant news, sharing rumors and speculating about what exactly happened.

Rick Carter, a building maintenance man who keeps the boilers running at the university, blamed out-of-control drinking.

"How do you stop it? Because as long as you find kids, you find alcohol. . . . Is it an isolated incident?

"Yeah," he said. "And people looking for trouble found it."