It’s an unusual Criminal Call sheet in Indiana County Court today. The list of cases up for review normally numbers six or seven dozen, but there is only one defendant on the docket today: it’s Simere Alford, the 21-year-old SCI Pine Grove inmate man charged with the attempted murders of two state troopers last summer.
Alford is charged with 22 criminal offenses, including two first degree counts of attempted homicide of a law enforcement officer, seventeen other felonies, and three misdemeanors.
As he was being taken back to the prison after a hearing on June 24th, Alford broke free of his back-seat restraint, reached into the front seat and grabbed the gun of Trooper Jeremy Leasure, who was driving. He fired a shot, just missing Leasure’s head. Leasure let go of the steering wheel and reached into the back seat, grabbing the gun as Alford fired a second shot, which hit Alford in the leg and foot. The vehicle then crashed into a guardrail and Trooper Allison Goswick got out and opened the rear door as Leasure and Alford wrestled. Disarming Alford, Leasure got him out of the vehicle and forced him to the ground. Both troopers and Alford were treated and released at Indiana Regional Medical Center, with Trooper Goswick suffering a broken arm in the crash.
President Judge William Martin conducted two pre-trial conferences for Alford last month and ordered another pre-trial conference, setting the trial date for June 8th. The other case is for aggravated harassment of a prisoner.
Alford is from Philadelphia. He’s serving thirteen to forty years in prison for the suffocation death of his sister, who was found with a plastic bag over her head in 2017.
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