No answers yet in fatal ambush of Pennsylvania state trooper

A investigation continued in northeast Pennsylvania on Sunday after a state trooper was killed and another was critically wounded in an apparent shooting ambush over the weekend.

No suspect or suspects have been identified in the Friday night attack, and no specific motive has been given.

State police announced late Sunday that the wounded trooper, Alex T. Douglass, was awake and talking, the Associated Press reported. A state police spokesman said authorities were getting “fantastic” tips.

The Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers announced a $50,000 reward Saturday for information on who killed Cpl. Bryon Dixon and wounded Douglass during a shift change outside the agency’s Blooming Grove barracks near the New York-Pennsylvania border.

Representatives of the Pennsylvania State Police did not immediately return messages seeking comment on Sunday afternoon. “I don’t know if you’ll get anything, they’re all still out,” said a trooper who answered the phone at the Blooming Grove barracks.

The Scranton Times-Tribune reported that state police were being aided by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A state police spokeswoman told the newspaper, “We don’t have anything new to release on any suspects or any other information regarding the investigation.”

A receptionist for the Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton said Sunday that she didn’t have any information on the wounded trooper, Douglass. An answering message for a hospital spokeswoman said the hospital would not be providing any more information and referred questions to the state police.

State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan told reporters Saturday afternoon that the attack was “directed specifically at law enforcement and specifically the Pennsylvania State Police.”

Noonan described the attack as an ambush, and said Dixon and Douglass “really had no chance to defend themselves.”

“It’s a cowardly attack,” he said. “It’s an attack upon all of us.”

Dixon, a trooper for nearly seven years, had transferred to the Blooming Grove barracks in recent months, Noonan said.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund -- which tracks police fatalities -- 36 U.S. law enforcement officers have been shot to death so far in 2014.

That’s a 64% increase over the number of officers killed over the same period in 2013, when 22 were shot to death.

In all, 31 officers were fatally shot in 2013, below the national average of 55 per year between 2004 and 2013.

Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.

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