Probe focuses on weapons
All's quiet Thursday at the home of 68-year-old Carolin M. Kern at 34 Browntown Road in Avella, where murder suspect Dennis James Kern was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Wednesday.
Dennis Kern
A SWAT team prepares during a standoff a residence on Browntown Road in Avella on Wednesday where they believe the husband of a woman found shot to death.
In the aftermath of Wednesday’s standoff that ended with murder suspect Dennis James Kern killing himself in the Avella home he and his estranged wife once shared, investigators are still trying to figure out how and why he had access to firearms.
As a part of a protection-from-abuse order Carolin M. Kern, 68, received in May for a two-year period, Dennis Kern, 61, was to relinquish all guns and ammunition to the Washington County sheriff’s office. When contacted Thursday, Sheriff Sam Romano said his department did not have any firearms that belonged to Dennis Kern.
Romano said the PFA was served by Beaver County Constable Jeff Ash, and that Dennis Kern’s weapons were turned over to a third party.
“My understanding as far as the weapons is that the person can have them turned over to another individual who is cleared to have them in storage,” Romano said. “I was told someone else took those weapons for Mr. Kern.” The third party has to undergo a background check to be cleared.
If the weapons are taken by a third party, a form must be filed with the sheriff’s office. Chief Deputy James Dalessandro would not say if the office had received a form about Kern’s weapons but added it is not a public record. Dalessandro said he wasn’t “personally aware” of the order requiring Dennis Kern to turn over his weapons.
”If we would have served (the PFA), we would have taken them,” he said. Copies of PFA orders are provided to the county sheriff, police departments and the area district judge, and a constable could have served it through the district judge’s office.
Carolin Kern was found dead Tuesday in her car on a rural Jefferson Township road of a shotgun wound to the chest. Her vehicle appeared to have been struck from behind, and the truck Dennis Kern was driving had damage consistent with such a crash. Dennis Kern was the only suspect.
State police Trooper Matthew Jardine said the shotgun and ammunition Dennis Kern used to kill himself were consistent with the types used to kill Carolin Kern. He said police did not yet know who owned the gun.
The pair had been married for three years and had a rocky relationship. Dennis Kern was arrested in March for threatening to shoot and kill his estranged wife. That case was closed in Washington County Court when he pleaded guilty to a summary charge.
Carolin Kern was granted a temporary PFA at the end of March and filed for divorce in April. She was granted the two-year PFA in May. According to court documents, Carolin Kern said he threatened to blow her head off and went and got two guns from the basement when she told him she wanted a divorce.
The active protection-from-abuse order prohibited him from having contact with her and ordered him out of the 34 Browntown Road home they had once shared.
Megan Dunlevy, Fayette County Shelter and Legal Advocacy coordinator, said that while PFAs are beneficial, they don’t always protect victims.
“If somebody wants to do something to someone else, they are going to do it,” she said. “(A PFA) is just a piece of paper – for some a very helpful piece of paper and for others it is not enough.”
Dunlevy said more than 400 people filed for PFAs in Washington County last year. The purpose of a PFA is to limit or prevent contact for victims who are being threatened or harmed. Dunlevy said some people won’t file for a protection-from-abuse order because they know it will only make the situation worse.
“We don’t encourage anyone to do anything,” she said. “We just make them aware of their options.”
Jardine said state police are doing their best to fill any remaining holes in the investigation.
“We are trying to tie up loose ends.”