By Megan Guza
Source Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
New Kensington police Officer John C. Hamm keeps a picture of his best friend tucked into his protective vest every day.
He and Charles "Chuckie" Stipetich attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania's police academy together, where Officer Hamm said his friend "pushed me harder and harder every day."
They looked forward to eventually swapping stories about their first arrests, pursuits and everything else that comes with being a cop.
Stipetich, a rookie part-time officer in Oakdale, was gunned down outside his parents' Blawnox home in 2022 after the shooter, Kevin McSwiggen, believed the off-duty officer cut him off in traffic.
From the left pocket of his vest — the one right above his heart, Officer Hamm said — his friend will get a front row seat "until the end of my career." He said his friend has been with him for arrests, during pursuits and in any number of dangerous situations.
He called him his guardian angel.
"I can only hope to be half the man he was," he told Common Pleas Judge Jill Rangos on Thursday. Then, speaking to his friend, he wept: "Miss you, buddy. Please keep me safe."
More than a dozen friends and family members either spoke to Judge Rangos or submitted letters detailing the pain caused by the loss of the man they called Chuckie.
The judge ultimately sentenced 43-year-old McSwiggen to 20 to 40 years in prison — the maximum sentence for third-degree murder.
McSwiggen, she said, had every opportunity to stop the situation that unfolded around 10:30 p.m. on July 3, 2022.
He was driving on Route 28 when, as he saw it, a red Taurus passed him in the left lane and subsequently cut him off. McSwiggen's dashboard camera captured his agitation: "Oh, I should just cut you up. I should just cut you."
Judge Rangos said McSwiggen could have ignored the perceived traffic slight. He could have chosen to stop following Stipetich when he turned onto Jackson Street or two blocks later when he turned on to Fountain Street and parked outside his parents' home.
McSwiggen confronted the off-duty Oakdale officer, something also captured by his own dash cam. Some shouting ensued, and Stipetich's father, Charles P. Stipetich, eventually came outside. He tried to get between his son and McSwiggen.
For a few brief moments, all three men disappear from the camera frame. There's a gunshot, and they come back into view. As the younger man checks himself for a gunshot wound, McSwiggen pointed the gun at his father. The off-duty officer pulled his service weapon and fired.
"He saved me," Mr. Stipetich said after the sentencing. "I wish it would have been the other way around. I'd have rather him shot me than my son. If it wasn't for Chuckie, I wouldn't be standing here either."
The day he left for the Marine Corps, he told his father: "Dad, I'm glad I'm finally going to go somewhere where you don't know anybody."
His father recalled asking him what he meant. He told him there was nobody his father could call, no one to put a word in with, no way to check in. He wanted to do this on his own.
Mr. Stipetich waited a month or two.
One morning during training, a drill instructor from a different battalion called the younger Stipetich over: "I just wanted to tell you that your father said good morning."
Chuckie never did figure out how he did it, Mr. Stipetich said.
"I tell you this story because this is the first time in his life I can't make a phone call to see how my son is," Mr. Stipetich wept. "It's not fair."
Deena Stipetich, the slain man's mother, told Judge Rangos of the pain of losing her first-born child — how she couldn't even give him one last hug, as his body was considered evidence.
"For me to get through this world, I am now, every day of my life, numb," she said. "Everything I do is from the past. I want him here. I can never get him back.
"I want my son," she sobbed as Judge Rangos, too, appeared to tear up.
Deputy District Attorney Lisa Carey's voice shook as she called each friend and family member when making her final arguments to Judge Rangos, describing hundreds of hours of video footage pulled from responding officers' body-worn cameras.
"I couldn't show what the defendant did to Chuckie because it was too horrible to view," she said.
The very first officer on the scene that night, a Blawnox cop, performed CPR on the wounded Stipetich. He brought him back for a few minutes, she said.
"You see the life leave this young man," she said, calling it "the most horrible video I've ever viewed."
'Never should have happened'
More than a dozen of McSwiggen's friends and family members, too, spoke or wrote letters on his behalf.
Sarelle McSwiggen read a letter written by her nephew, Nathan, who is McSwiggen's son. She said that although the 14-year-old is not his biological son, he has custody of the boy and has cared for him since the breakdown of his relationship with Nathan's mother.
Nathan cried as he sat with family members in the jury box throughout the hearing.
"I've known Kevin, my dad, all my life," he wrote. "I don't know what a character letter is ... I will always love my dad."
Nathan described how McSwiggen, a contractor with his own business, took him on jobs with him and called him his "little helper." He said his father would "never purposefully go and hurt another person."
"It's really hard not having him around as my dad," he wrote.
Cynthia McSwiggen said her son wasn't out to be a vigilante that night; rather, he had a gun on him because his contracting work took him into some rougher neighborhoods. She said he donated his time, his work and his materials to help low-income families.
McSwiggen has maintained that he fired in self-defense — that the father lunged at him and the pair attacked him.
"That night should have never happened," McSwiggen said when given the chance to speak ahead of being sentenced. "I should never have had to defend myself from two attackers."
Testimony during trial, McSwiggen claimed, was full of lies. Evidence was tampered with, he said.
He told the Stipetich family he was sorry, that he wished he could bring their son back. He said he relives that night of the shooting every day.
"Unfortunately, somebody had to die that night," he said.
No one needed to die, Judge Rangos told him.
"What happened in this case never should have happened in a civilized society," she said, adding later: "It could have been prevented but for Mr. McSwiggen's irrational decision to pursue Mr. Stipetich that night."
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