I haven’t written about this yet, but started now. I think I needed to sleep on it some more because I found this so profoundly upsetting and disturbing .
First up: a wrong place, wrong time. A woman in Berwyn murdered by an out of his mind lunatic….whom police had dealt with just a couple of hours before he shot this woman. This was a mom. She was a sister. She was a friend. she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time when someone decided to have a psychotic break. I hope they lock that guy up for a really long time.
According to the timeline laid out, Tredyffrin Police HAD Steven Jahn IN CUSTODAY earlier that evening and perhaps if they had kept a hold of him, this woman might still be alive?
https://patch.com/pennsylvania/te/man-shot-killed-woman-random-attack-tredyffrin-da
It also speaks to the need for mental health evaluations to be added to requirements for carry permits etc.
I hate to refer to her as just “a woman” or “this woman” but out of respect for her family I am while they try to adjust to something anything but normal.
This woman is known to friends of mine. I have woken up thinking about her these past couple of days. This was about a quasi homeless man on a psychotic break and maybe some sort of substance abuse (who knows?) who murdered a woman who will never wake up again to see the sun rise or take joy in her family, smile at her kids, go for a walk, kiss her husband goodnight. This is a woman with kids and a husband who have to try to make sense of something utterly senseless.
And this piece of crap who shot her? Here is the police comnplaint thingy:
The docket:
Now was Jahn truly homeless or unhoused? He went to Conestoga and supposedly grew up around Midland in Berwyn? People I spoke to indicated he had lived in Florida, New Jersey, and Maryland before coming back to PA in the beginning of the year? Someone said he had been at some place called the “French Creek Inn” which is some sort of no tell meets meets flop house in East Pikeland? Did anyone check that out? I never heard of that place and someone said it actually came up recently at an East Pikeland meeting?
Anyway, this guy was picked up with his guns at his cousin’s house on Conestoga Road? Look at him? Is that just a full mental break or something else as well? Why do I ask? Because I figured out WHY his name was familiar. 2013. Crazy car accident after hit and runs in East Goshen on North Chester Road. Like 3 hit and runs and his own car upended in the woods.
And next we go to the death of that poor State Trooper Corporal Timothy O’Connor. Fatally shot while performing a traffic stop by one Jesse Nathan Elks. This happened out in West Caln. Another guy who snapped who owned a gun. Elks then ate his own gun.
Timothy O’Connor leaves a wife, daughter, and other family like his beloved parents behind. I literally started crying at one simple comment on the Chester County District Attorney’s Office Facebook Page from his namesake father. All it said was “I love you son.”
There is a meal train for the widow and child: https://mealtrain.com/gew5wl
So I can’t really find the social media of Jesse Elks but obviously they are out there somewhere because people are posting about it.
When you dig into Elks you find he fathered kids by two women, married one who later divorced him. He was living in a mobile home park in Honey Brook, not sure if it was the township or West Caln area. He seemed to me to be a POS with anger issues and a coward. He took the life of Timothy O’Connor and then killed himself depriving the State Troopers and O’Connor’s family of justice. At least the women who bore his children are free of him…and I hope his kids do okay through this as innocents in his act of murder.
So why did Jesse Elks have a gun?
Look I am not debating the right to own arms. I am asking when the f*ck are they going to add mental health evaluations to the ownership process? It’s the people with the guns doing the killing, so it’s a different conversation to the regular or more typical gun control conversation.
It’s like the fact that sometimes when people have these mental health breaks, law enforcement needs to confiscate weapons sooner, rather than later.
Corporal O’Connor and currently unnamed wife, mother, sister, friend both were taken to Paoli Hospital. What a terribly sad duty for those who work at Paoli. Two tragedies that were random acts of senseless violence. I hope they met on the way to heaven.
I am not particularly eloquent about these senseless acts and I so want to be because these two victims whose souls left their human form at Paoli Hospital deserve that….from all of us.
We live in an awful world right now that needs more happiness. Pray for these families and for these two people murdered through random acts of violence and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This could happen to anyone, and that is the most gut wrenching thought of all.
I close with what Timothy O’Connor’s mom posted. It was public. Mrs. O’Connor, I don’t know you either, but like the currently unnamed murder victim in Berwyn, we share people in common and I am just so damn sorry.
People, we need to strive for a better world. And heaven has two new angels way before they should have been there. And can we also put in a plug for Chester County officials to get a hospital back in the area of where the other two closed with a trauma center?
Ok that’s it. I have no more words for now.
