News

June 10, 2009

Man who shot trooper angry over divorce

Autenrieth, who died in gunfire that killed Trooper Miller of Pittston Twp., kidnapped son from estranged wife in Nazareth.

MICHAEL RUBINKAM Associated Press Writer

NAZARETH — Daniel Autenrieth’s life was unraveling. Creditors had sued him over thousands of dollars in unpaid bills. His house was in foreclosure. His wife of 10 years had filed for divorce and then for a protective order, claiming years of physical and mental abuse. He’d lost custody of their three children.

The 31-year-old car salesman and youth baseball coach was angry. On Sunday night, his rage boiled over.

After arguing with his estranged wife, Autenrieth kidnapped his 9-year-old son at gunpoint and led police on a 40-mile chase into the Pocono Mountains, then started a gun battle that killed him and a well-liked state police trooper.

Trooper Joshua Miller, a 34-year-old Marine veteran and married father of three, will be buried Friday after a funeral at Pittston Area High School, his alma mater. Miller, the first state trooper since 2005 to be killed in the line of duty, has been hailed as a hero for distracting Autenrieth while other officers whisked the boy to safety.

Court documents filed in connection with a bitter divorce and custody battle show that Autenrieth’s behavior was increasingly erratic in the weeks preceding Sunday’s shooting near Tobyhanna. His wife, Susan Autenrieth, a 31-year-old nurse, reported that he threatened to kill her, physically attacked her, repeatedly broke into her apartment, and obsessively called her — more than 100 times in a two-week span.

“The stalking, the threats, the rage are all escalating and I truly fear for my safety,” she wrote in mid-May.

Through her attorney, Susan Autenrieth declined comment Tuesday. “She’s dealing with a very tragic situation for three young kids and she doesn’t want it to become more complicated than necessary,” said the attorney, Kimberly Bennett.

Court records show the marriage had been on shaky ground since at least 2007, when Susan Autenrieth obtained a protection-from-abuse order against her husband, saying he had a cocaine problem and a bad temper. The couple separated this past February and Susan filed for divorce a month later.

Daniel Autenrieth contested the divorce. “He informed me that I would always be his wife, that he would never let me go,” Susan wrote. “He told me that he would make it so no one ever sees me again.”

As the couple battled in court, their financial woes mounted.

A finance company and a bank sued Daniel, saying he had stopped making payments on nearly $9,000 in debt. Wells Fargo moved to foreclose on the couple’s house.

Autenrieth’s friend, Bob Johnson, said he appeared depressed when he last spoke with him on Saturday.

“He said, ‘Things are really bad right now, really bad,”’ Johnson told The Express-Times of Easton. “He went over the deep end.”

On Sunday night, Autenrieth was supposed to drop the children off curbside at his wife’s apartment in Nazareth. Instead, he went inside and began arguing with her, then brandished a gun and drove off with their 9-year-old son.

Authorities arrived at the house and a 40-mile chase ensued.

Police said Autenrieth led them on a chase that lasted more than 30 minutes and involved nine police cruisers as he threaded busy intersections and accelerated on major highways with his son in the backseat of a Honda Civic.

Police finally forced his car into a guard rail along Route 611 in Monroe County. As troopers rushed the car, Autenrieth began shooting. Though they were both hit, Miller and Trooper Robert Lombardo, 35, managed to return fire, striking Autenrieth eight times as two other police officers snatched the boy from the car.

Miller, who was shot in the neck and thigh, died at an Allentown hospital. Lombardo was treated for a gunshot wound to the upper left torso.

The boy escaped injury and has been released to his mother’s custody. “He’s still in shock,” said Dana Scuorzo, a neighbor who spoke with Susan Autenrieth on Tuesday. “He looked up to his dad.”

But when Susan Autenrieth reported in mid-May that she and her children were terrified of Daniel — who stood 6-foot-2 and weighed 230 pounds — her words were chillingly prescient.

“I fear what is next,” she wrote.

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