A search for lost treasure along the Susquehanna River in Central Pennsylvania in 2011 turned up a gun Bucks County authorities say was used in a Bristol Township homicide.
Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office and Bristol Township police are looking for the “good Samaritan couple” who found the .22 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver at Kline’s Run Park, Long Level at the Lake Clarke Marina in the area of Lower Windsor and Manor Townships near the Lancaster and York County border. The couple was looking for lost artifacts while the river level was low when the gun was discovered, authorities said.
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Deputy District Attorney Christopher Rees said the couple is not in trouble and prosecutors just want to “pin down some more details” on the find.
The gun is linked, according to authorities, to the December 2006 homicide of Kevin Battista in the Bloomsdale-Fleetwing section. The district attorney’s office said in a statement they would like to talk to the couple because the “weapon may be useful in a criminal prosecution.”
“[The couple] did the absolute right think and should be applauded for reporting the gun,” Reese said of the couple who turned the gun over to Lower Windsor Township police in 2011.
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A Bristol Township detective discovered the revolver while searching a database for weapons that matched the gun in the shooting death of Battista. Reese said authorities have several pieces of evidence that link the gun found in the river to Battista’s murder.
Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
Battista was with his neighbor and went into the Bloomsdale-Fleetwing section on the night he was killed. He spotted a group of men at the intersection of Mustang and Aieracobra streets and asked for $60 worth of drugs. Two of the men approached. Ckaron Handy of Philadelphia is then alleged to have pulled a gun and demanded money and shot the 30-year-old father and union machinist, according to court papers.
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District Attorney David Heckler said at the time of Handy’s 2012 arrest that Battista, who was described as a recreational drug user, as “a hard-working union member who made a real bad choice on that evening to go into an area where he had not been before.”
Handy is expected to go before a judge for the killing this fall.
Anyone with any information about the gun or the people who found it is asked to contact Bristol Township Police Detective Timothy Fuhrmann at 267-812-3049 or by email at BucksDA@co.bucks.pa.us.
