McKeesport mayor says city police are committed to battling crime and violence

Mayor Michael Cherepko wants residents to know that crime is not taken lightly in the city.

Mayor Michael Cherepko told the small crowd in attendance at Wednesday’s council meeting that the city is doing everything in its power “to try to curb this addiction to crime and violence” in McKeesport.

On Monday morning, Dylan Saula, 22, of North Versailles was found dead on Lysle Boulevard from a gunshot wound. Allegheny County Police charged Daemond Artemus, 17, of McKeesport with homicide in connection with the shooting death. Aremus is accused of shoving Saula’s body out of a car on Lysle Boulevard.

Cherepko said there’s a misconception that shootings are taken lightly by the city.

“Every single time anything happens in the city, whether someone’s shot, whether it’s shots fired, I can tell you from police Chief (Mark Steele’s) and my standpoint, your heart sinks immediately,” he said. Cherepko added that the city cannot combat violence on its own, referring to the Healthy Village Learning Institute as one of its community partners in the effort.

“Anyone that thinks that we can do it ourselves is just absolutely wrong. We need a community. We need all hands on deck,” he said.

The mayor also said that it starts at home.

“But the reality of the world is you have parents that not only are they not trying to prevent their kids getting into this, you actually have parents that condone it and support their kids being into drugs,” Cherepko said. “I’m not making excuses. We still have a lot to do. I’m just pointing out to you that we need the community involved as well. You’d be surprised by the amount of people that know what their kids are doing, depend on their kids to bring money home even though they’re risking their lives each and every day and are in the game themselves.”

Cherepko said the administration and council work in the best interest of the city’s residents despite the scuttlebutt posted on social media.

“I just don’t want you to think that you have an administration or city council that doesn’t care when this happens,” he said. “I just wanted to address that because it’s just so far from the truth.”

Cherepko commended McKeesport police for its efforts following the shooting death Monday.

“And our police, not the county, very quickly got on cameras, got a description of the car, tracked it from one camera to another, got a license plate and found a car. And one of our new canines did a track and tracked it right to a house where we were able to get suspects in custody,” Cherepko said.