First Pennsylvania State Troopers Killed in the Line of Duty

On September second, nineteen oh six, two Pennsylvania State Police officers drove into McCalmont Township on a straightforward assignment: arrest a pair of fugitive murderers barricaded inside a farmhouse. Privates John F. Henry and Francis A. Zehringer never came back out.

The confrontation turned into a firefight. Both troopers were killed and three more were wounded. Henry and Zehringer became the first members of the Pennsylvania State Police to die in the line of duty, about sixteen months after the force was founded in nineteen oh five.

The Pennsylvania State Police was the first statewide police force in the United States, created partly to provide law enforcement in the rural areas that county sheriffs and city police could not consistently reach. The deaths of these two men established the human cost of that mission from almost the very beginning. Their names are inscribed on the Pennsylvania State Police Call of Honor, which acknowledges officers who laid down their lives rather than leave the path of duty.