Crowd mourns 3 officers at viewing

PITTSBURGH - Law enforcement officials from as far away as Georgia gathered yesterday to pay tribute to three fellow officers killed in the line of duty over the weekend.

Allegheny County police officers led three riderless horses to Pittsburgh's City-County Building, where mourners from the region and a host of police and correction officials paid tribute to Officers Eric Kelly, Stephen Mayhle, and Paul Sciullo II.

The officers were shot to death Saturday while responding to an argument between a mother and her 22-year-old son, who is jailed on homicide charges.

R. Joseph Mason, a motor officer patrolman in Cobb County, Ga., north of Atlanta, drove up in a rental van with five fellow officers.

"We just don't wear uniforms in Cobb County. We wear them all over the country," he said. "And we wear the same uniforms. The band of brothers, the color blue sticks together."

Though he did not expect to meet the officers' families, he said, "there's thousands of people behind them, thousands of officers who love them and care about them."

In Philadelphia, a police spokesman, Lt. Frank Vanore, said about 40 officers were to leave this morning to attend this afternoon's memorial service. Among those representing the Philadelphia department, which has lost six officers in the line of duty in the last year and a half, will be Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey and Chief Inspector Joseph Sullivan.

Sgt. Joe Teahan of the Boston Police Department was one of 75 Boston officers and 25 from surrounding departments who will attend today's service. He said police officers were "pretty much a fraternity throughout the country."

"We're showing them that we got their backs," he said. "I think the families see the support from the number of guys here to let them know they're not alone. They know there are other guys out there, much like their husbands or fathers. . . . We care."

Jane Bean, a retired counselor for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, made the trip from the suburb of South Park. Her daughter and son-in-law are police officers in suburban Pittsburgh.

"You just admire and honor what they do," Bean said as she fought back tears. "It's times like this you realize how important they are."

Police say Richard Poplawski shot the officers at his mother's house after she called 911 to ask them to remove him.

When officers arrived, Margaret Poplawski opened the door for them. She later told police that she hadn't known know her son was standing behind her with a gun.

Sciullo was shot in the home and Mayhle on the stoop. Both were dead within seconds. Kelly was shot as he arrived to provide backup, prompting a four-hour siege and gun battle with police, authorities said.

Another officer, Timothy McManaway, was shot in a hand, and a fifth broke his leg on a fence.

Richard Poplawski was wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with a variety of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle, authorities said.

He was shot in his legs and was being held under close observation at the Allegheny County Jail on criminal homicide, attempted homicide, and other charges.

Friends have said Poplawski was upset and angry about losing his job a few months ago. Rantings on a white-supremacist Web site indicate he was preoccupied with the idea that President Obama was going to overturn the Second Amendment and that Jews were secretly running the country.

Poplawski's public defender yesterday asked a judge to impose a gag order to prevent police from talking about the case. Lisa Middleman said police had disclosed what Poplawski said to them and other information about the case.

A spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. said prosecutors would remind police not to talk.