Michael Rosfeld charged with homicide in Antwon Rose killing

Michael Rosfeld, the 30-year-old East Pittsburgh police officer from Penn Hills who fatally shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose on June 19, has been charged with one count of criminal homicide, according to court documents filed Wednesday morning. Rosfeld turned himself at City Court on Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. and was granted an unsecured $250,000 bond, which he posted.

His preliminary hearing is set for July 6 at 10:00 a.m.

The police affidavit confirms Allegheny County Medical Examiner Dr. Abdulrezak Shakir ruled the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and ruled the manner of death was homicide. Rose was struck three times, including one fatal shot in his back.

The affidavit also contains information about the earlier shooting in North Braddock, to which North Braddock Police responded around 8:30 p.m. Surveillance footage from the scene of the initial shooting reportedly shows a handgun emerge from the rear passenger window of light-colored Chevrolet Cruze sedan. In an interview with Allegheny County Police, the driver of the vehicle — whom the report does not identify — said he picked up two passengers, one of whom he did not know. After seeing a photo of Antwon Rose, the driver told authorities Rose was the person he knew, and that Rose sat in the front seat of the car. The driver did not know the passenger sitting in the rear seat, whom the surveillance video appears to show firing a weapon.

The driver said he had no firearms in his vehicle. When searched, detectives recovered two firearms from the Chevrolet Cruze, and later identified one of the weapons as the pistol used in the earlier shooting in North Braddock. The empty magazine found in Rose’s pocket was found to fit the other firearm found in the car.

When interviewed by Allegheny County Police, detectives noticed inconsistencies in Rosfeld’s official statement. Rosfeld originally said he saw a what he believed to be a gun in the hand of the front seat passenger, but when asked at the end of his statement to repeat the sequence of events, Rosfeld told detectives he did not see a gun. Rosfeld also said he was uncertain if the individual who fled from the front passenger seat was still aiming his arm at him when he fired the shots.