NORRISTOWN, Pa. — A Pennsylvania police officer who fatally shot a 22-year-old college student, who had ended up at the wrong house late at night and was waiting for friends to pick him up, has been charged with voluntary manslaughter, a prosecutor said Tuesday. Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said Upper Pottsgrove Police Cpl. Sean Farrell, 58, is charged in the Aug. 23 death of Glenwood Earl Pysher IV. The prosecutor said the officer had less-than-lethal options and did not need to resort to shooting Pysher during the encounter. The Montgomery County Detective Bureau investigated the shooting and reviewed footage from Farrell’s body-worn camera, the district attorney’s office said in a news release. “The investigation found that Cpl. Farrell had less-than-lethal options on his utility belt that he did not employ, including a taser. At the time of the shooting, the officer was a safe distance from Pysher behind a car, and the victim had his hands in the air and did not possess any type of weapon. Mr. Pysher was not a threat. This is not a legal use of deadly force, leading to the charge of Voluntary Manslaughter,” Steele said in a news release. An attorney for Pysher’s family issued a statement thanking the prosecutor. “The family is grateful for the work of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office and they are looking forward to justice in this horribly tragic, preventable and reckless conduct that took the life of their son,” said attorney Ken Fulginiti. Farrell turned himself in to the Montgomery County Detectives on Tuesday. Magisterial District Judge Kathleen Rebar set bail at US$75,000, and Farrell must turn in all weapons to the state police as a condition of his release, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said. He has a preliminary hearing set for Sept. 10. Farrell was the first officer on the scene after a resident called 911 to report someone trying to break into the back door of a home. Farrell’s body-worn camera showed the officer walking down the driveway with his gun drawn, using its light to illuminate the way, the release says. Standing behind a car in the driveway, Farrell saw Pysher on the home’s patio, near the back door. Farrell yelled, “Police, let me see your hands.” Then he yelled, “Hands up, hands up now, drop to the ground.” Pysher is seen on video raising his hands as he began walking toward the officer and continuing to walk in that direction as the officer yelled, “Drop to the ground,” the release said. Farrell again yelled, “Drop to the ground,” then yelled, “Stop or I’ll …” But before he finished the sentence, Farrell fired two shots, hitting Pysher twice in the chest, the district attorney’s office said. Pysher was 17 to 20 feet (five to six metres) from the officer when he was shot, the release says. Farrell told another officer who arrived after the shooting that Pysher had charged him, “screaming and yelling and wouldn’t get down on the ground,” but the body-worn camera video doesn’t show that happening, according to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint. The investigation found that Pysher had been out at several bars earlier in the evening to celebrate a friend’s 21st birthday. A designated driver drove the group to the home of the person whose birthday it was around 11 p.m., and Pysher left about half an hour later to walk half a mile to another friend’s house to keep drinking but ended up at the wrong house, the release says. Pysher’s father has said he believes, based on what his son’s friends have told him, that his son tried to enter what he thought was his friend’s house. “He tried to open the doorknob and obviously startled the homeowner,” Glen Pysher told The Associated Press last week. “From what we understand, he announced, `Hey! Open the door!’ because he thought he was at his friend’s house.” His son then sat down on the back porch and contacted his friends, who realized he was in the wrong place and set out to find him, the father said. Bowling Green State University criminal justice professor Philip Stinson maintains a nationwide database of roughly 25,000 cases of police officers arrested since 2005. According to Stinson’s data, 218 local sworn police officers had been charged with murder or manslaughter in an on-duty fatal police shooting between January 2005 and the end of July 2026. There are several cases still pending, but to date, 78 officers have been convicted of a crime in those shootings, while 107 have been acquitted or had their cases dismissed. In Pennsylvania, 10 officers had been charged in that time, six of whom were convicted. Stinson said there are fluctuations in the number of officers charged over the years, but given there are close to a thousand fatal police encounters every year, those fluctuations seem statistically insignificant. “These are ugly cases. The facts are never easy,” Stinson said. “Grand juries seem to have a similar issue as criminal jurors. They are very reluctant to second guess the split-second, often life or death decisions of an on-duty police officer in a potentially violent street encounter.” The majority of officers charged in on-duty fatal shootings shot an unarmed person. In the 78 convictions, only 10 of the victims were armed with a gun at the time of the shootings. --- Brumback reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed. Tassanee Vejpongsa and Kate Brumback, The Associated Press
