Police testify that suspect admitted to Waynesburg slaying
WAYNESBURG – George Cameron knew the man he is accused of killing almost four years ago, and he told state police, “That’s what happens when someone pulls a knife on me,” two borough police officers testified Tuesday. Cameron, of Waynesburg, again is facing trial for criminal homicide for the Aug. 5, 1999, stabbing death of David Cumberledge of Waynesburg at an East High Street apartment building. Cameron is accused of stabbing Cumberledge 16 times just eight days after Cameron’s wife had filed for divorce.
In March, the state Superior Court ordered Cameron’s first-degree-murder conviction on March 30, 2000, overturned on appeal, and his second trial began Monday before Greene County President Judge H. Terry Grimes.
Patrolman Brian Machesky testified that he and officers Owen Coffman and Charles Sochor went to 291 E. High St. shortly after midnight Aug. 5 expecting a domestic dispute and found Cumberledge lying face down in a pool of blood inside the apartment Cameron and his then-wife, Lisa, shared.
Machesky said he observed blood in the entryway to the building, in the hallway leading to the
apartment and in the apartment itself.
He testified that he later went to a parking lot three blocks away and recovered a bloodstained shirt over a nearby embankment, as well as two knives, one of which appeared to have blood on the blade, in the parking lot’s Dumpster.
Coffman said he, Sochor and troopers Kiprian Yarosh and Jason Altman of the state police Waynesburg barracks began combing the neighborhood, looking for Cameron.
Coffman said Cameron was caught just before 1 a.m. on Morris Street after running in front of his police vehicle.
Cameron was taken to the state police station’s command room and, when a trooper asked the officers who had died in the incident, it was Cameron who spoke first, Coffman testified.
“The suspect said, ‘David Cumberledge. That’s what happens when someone pulls a knife on me,'” Coffman recalled on the witness stand.
Sochor corroborated Coffman’s testimony, repeating the same statement he heard Cameron make to the police after the question was asked.
Sochor, who pursued Cameron on foot after the incident, said he saw the suspect running toward First Street and then east on Morris Street.
“I had trouble catching up to him, so I would say he was doing quite fine,” he said, in response to a question from Greene County First Assistant District Attorney Linda Chambers as to how Cameron was walking around at the time of his arrest.
However, borough police Lt. Glenn Bates, the investigating officer, testified that when he went to the state police barracks around 2:30 a.m. Aug. 5, 1999, he found Cameron to be incoherent and had trouble understanding what Bates was telling him.
“I felt he wouldn’t understand the charges that would be filed against him,” he said.
Mark Mogle, forensic scientist for the state police regional laboratory in Greensburg, said he received a pair of black pants, shoes, a bloody sock and two knives to analyze.
While he testified that the blood found on the pants, sock and knives was human blood, he could not say if it was Cameron’s blood or Cumberledge’s, because the enzymes used in the genetic marker analysis he conducted were comparable to blood samples of both men.
Sarah Young, a former forensic DNA analyst for the state police regional crime lab, said she analyzed Cameron’s pants, a sock and blood lifted from one of the knives when she was employed at the lab between 1997 and 2000.
The blood on Cameron’s sock matched that of Cumberledge in all six regions of the sock that were tested, she said, noting that the probability of finding someone with the same DNA profile was 1 in 4.5 million whites, 1 in 15 million hispanics and 1 in 59 million blacks.
On the pants and knife, Cumberledge’s blood was found on five of six regions tested, and the sixth region was inconclusive, because there was not enough DNA to analyze, Young said.
“With those statistics, you can make your own determinations,” she said.
Before the end of testimony Tuesday, jurors watched a portion of a video of the crime scene recorded by state police in the hours after the stabbing. Jurors saw blood splatters and torn photos on the floor of the hallway leading to the apartment where Cumberledge was found and also saw spots of blood on the baseboards in the hallway.
Chambers and Public Defender Harry Cancelmi are expected to give their closing arguments when the trial resumes today at 8:30 a.m. before Grimes.