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Fallen Penn Hills officer's police car door going to D.C. museum
submitted
The Penn Hills Police car door that has been stored for five years will be donated to the Crime Museum on Aug. 20, 2015, as a memorial to officer Michael Crawshaw who was killed in 2009.
A door that stood between a Penn Hills police officer and his killer will be donated to the Crime Museum in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Michael Crawshaw, 32, died while he was waiting in his car for backup to a call about a shooting at a Johnston Road home on Dec. 6, 2009.
He died when Ronald Robinson sprayed Crawshaw's car with shots from an AK-47 assault rifle.
Robinson had just left the home of Danyal Morton after fatally shooting Morton over a drug debt, according to police reports.
The police department has stored the driver's side police car door with a bullet hole in it for almost five years in its station.
“This is a way to memorialize him,” Penn Hills Police officer Kevin Nemec said.
Nemec and volunteers from America's 9-11 rides, a motorcycle brigade which visits the three sites of the 2011 terrorist attacks each September, will escort the door to the Crime Museum in Washington, D.C., on Thursday , where Nemec hopes it will be displayed in Crawshaw's memory.
“It's another way of bringing things to a close,” police Chief Howard Burton said, of the donation.
The Crime Museum, opened in 2008, is focused on the history of crime, punishment and crime scene investigation.
The museum has partnered with the Officer Down Memorial Page Inc. to recognize fallen law enforcement officers. Museum officials did not return a call seeking comment.
Robinson, then 35, was convicted in 2013 and was sentenced to two life sentences in the deaths of Crawshaw and Morton, 40.
Police say Morton owed Robinson $500 for drugs.
The car in which Crawshaw died was taken by the county as evidence, and was scheduled to be compressed, Burton said.
Officers objected to this as it still had some of Crawshaw's personal belongings in it.
The door was eventually salvaged and returned to the department.
Crawshaw joined the Penn Hills police department in 2007.
Kelsey Shea is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-320-7845 or kshea@tribweb.com.
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