Posted on 01/07/2011 07:53

Wednesday, January 05, 2011
By MICHAEL BUCK

The Pennsylvania State Troopers Association president says he feels "betrayed" that federal prosecutors would offer a negotiated plea to the New Jersey woman who bought the gun used to kill a state trooper and wound another.

"I can't use strong enough words you just feel let down," President Bruce A. Edwards said Tuesday, adding that he feels "betrayed by those who are supposed to protect us."

Emily Joy Gross, of Westfield, N.J., will plead guilty Feb. 2 to lying on the gun purchase application, her attorney Eric Breslin said Monday.

The agreement does not include a second charge against Gross that she aided and abetted her boyfriend, Daniel Autenrieth, the Palmer Township man who authorities say killed Trooper Joshua Miller and wounded Trooper Robert Lombardo in a June 7, 2009, shootout in Monroe County. Autenrieth also was killed in the exchange.

Edwards expressed his vehement opposition in a Dec. 23 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; the letter also was copied to U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger.

"It's shocking to us that your office would be party to such an agreement," the letter says.

Edwards said Miller's widow, Angela Miller, and Lombardo are expected to meet soon with members from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Edwards said neither Angela Miller nor Lombardo have ever been directly contacted by prosecutors about the case. Edwards said Angela Miller and Lombardo relayed to prosecutors in Philadelphia that any plea agreement would be unacceptable and wanted the case to proceed with trial.

"We feel very strongly about this," Edwards said. "Both victims wanted this to go through the system."

Patricia Hartman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, declined to speak about the case.

"We take seriously our obligation to notify victims of all significant court events in a case," Hartman said.

Hartman would not verify that Angela Miller and Lombardo are meeting with representatives from her office.

Holder's office did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment.

Gross was charged in November 2009 with lying about her address when she bought a Taurus 9 mm gun in May 2009 at Cabela's, an outdoors store near Hamburg, Pa., and later giving the gun to Autenrieth, court records say.

Autenrieth, who had been barred from owning firearms because of a protection-from-abuse order his estranged wife filed, used the gun nine days later in the shootout, which followed a multicounty chase that started when Autenrieth kidnapped his 9-year-old son from his estranged wife's Nazareth home.

The point-blank gunbattle occurred on Route 611 in Coolbaugh Township, Monroe County.

The boy was rescued, uninjured.