K9 Officer Jesse E. Sollman, 36, was accidentally shot in the back and killed on March 25, 2005, by one of his fellow officers, Matthew Renninger, after conducting a training exercise at the Easton Police Department headquarters in Pennsylvania on South Third Street near the end of his shift. The incident occurred after Sollman and others returned to the station from SWAT team training. Officer Sollman was not wearing a bulletproof vest when he was shot approximately 3:30 p.m. in the back with a H & K 40 caliber semiautomatic weapon. Officer Renninger said that he was cleaning his gun and was bumped and the gun discharged.The bullet entered Sollman’s back in the left area above his kidneys. The bullet grazed his back of his left rib, went through his spleen, liver and diaphragm and penetrated the aorta which is the main blood vessel in the body. The bullet continued in an upward direction fracturing the front of the fifth rib and lodging in soft tissue right above the fifth rib. Officer Sollman had powder burns at the entrance wound and was said to be shot within a distance of three inches. The deminsions of the room where Officer Sollman was shot was a small 7’ x 10’ room. At the time of the shooting the three officers in the room were Jesse Sollman, Matthew Renninger and Robert Weber. He was taken by ambulance to Cottingham Stadium about eight blocks away where he was flown by helicopter to St. Luke’s Hospital in Fountain Hill where he succumbed to his wounds at 4:24 p.m. Renninger was driven to Muhlenberg Hospital for an evaluation and was admitted and spent five days there. Officer Sollman was a Corporal in the US Marine Corps and veteran. Prior to working for the Easton Police Department he worked for Middlesex County College Police in New Jersey and the Federal Bureau of Prisons in New York. He had served with the Easton Police Department for 8 years and was with the K9 Unit, Tactical Team, firearms instructor and defensive tactical instructor. Officer Sollman’s K9 was named Finn. He is survived by his wife Carin who he was married to for eight years, his six year old daughter, Savannah Rose Sollman, and his 2 year old son, Jacob Eric Sollman. Donations for the Sollman family can be made in care of the Fraternal Order of Police, Washington Lodge # 17 and mailed to the Easton Police Department 25 South 3rd St. Easton Pa 18042 attn: Off Ray Mead.
On March 16, 2006, findings of a grand jury investigation, a scathing 24 page report, were completed into the shooting death of Easton Police Officer Jesse Sollman. The grand jury found that Officer Matthew Renninger, the officer who shot Sollman on March 25, 2005, conducted himself in a negligent manner and directly caused the death of Officer Sollman. The grand jury found that while Renninger’s actions were negligent, they did not rise to the level of criminal negligence or recklessness. They also found that the evidence and the surrounding circumstances of the shooting of Officer Sollman by Renninger demonstrate that the shooting was unintentional and without malice. The report also listed 10 specific recommendations to improve operations at the Easton Police Department, including the termination of Officer Renninger who has been on paid administrative leave since the shooting. Officer Matthew Renninger, an eight-year veteran of the Easton Police Department, retired May 9, 2006 and claimed the shooting left him psychologically unable to ever again work as a police officer. A year later the city’s police pension commission awarded him a $10,765 annual pension.
The widow of Officer Jesse Sollmon, Carin, filed a $20 million lawsuit. On November 9, 2009, after more than a two year legal battle, she won a settlement of 5 million dollars in an agreement behind closed doors the day the trial was to start in Philadelphia . The town of Easton has until Jan. 31, 2010 to come up with $3 million, and the entire $5 million must be paid out by Dec. 31, 2010, according to the terms of a settlement. The settlement allowed the city to avoid a potentially publicly damaging trial which could have ended in a much more costly jury verdict.
