'Limited information' hampered search for absconded suspect later charged in slaying

When Allegheny County officials learned in May that Isreal Moseby had absconded from the unsecured community facility where he had been moved in January, a judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest.

Allegheny County Sheriff Kevin Kraus on Wednesday said his office tried to find Moseby — who was charged with aggravated assault for allegedly stabbing a woman twice in the neck — but couldn’t. The sheriff said Moseby had cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet.

“In this case, we had very limited information,” Kraus told TribLive.

By the time authorities found Moseby on June 9, police said he had killed a woman five days earlier. Investigators charged Moseby with fatally shooting 52-year-old Samantha Howells in Crafton Heights on June 4.

Moseby’s case, and the circumstances surrounding how and why he was released to an unsecured facility in the first place given his criminal and mental health history, were at the center of a TribLive investigation and have been the subject of repeated hearings this week in both Orphans’ Court and Allegheny County Common Pleas criminal court division.

According to court records, Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski denied bond for Moseby four times between October 2023 and November, finding that Moseby was a potential threat to the community.

However, Moseby’s public defender filed another motion to modify bond in Orphans’ Court in December. Orphans’ Court judges handle a range of legal matters including those dealing with incapacitated people, adoptions and wills. They do not handle criminal cases.

In January, Judge Michael McCarthy granted the motion and allowed Moseby to be released to Exceptional Home Care in Penn Hills, an unlocked facility that provides care for intellectually disabled people.

Part of the judge’s release conditions were that Moseby would be placed on electronic home monitoring. On Feb. 27, Moseby was released to the facility and banded for monitoring.

Moseby left the facility May 5. The next day, McCarthy signed the bench warrant.

The night the sheriff’s office received the warrant, Kraus said, his office checked one previous address they found for Moseby with no success.

The sheriff’s office, which includes about 17 detectives on three separate fugitive squads, checked homeless camps and went to previous addresses the courts had on record for Moseby.

Beyond that, Kraus said, there wasn’t much else to do. Moseby did not have a driver’s license or state-issued identification.

His office did not receive any information from court staff or pretrial services indicating that any higher priority ought to be placed on Moseby given the seriousness of the charges against him or his history.

“Nobody communicated that to us,” Kraus said.

Moseby was listed as homeless and had no vehicle – making him even harder to track, according to Kraus.

“We had way less than adequate information for this guy,” the sheriff said. “It’s challenging if someone’s homeless.”

The sheriff’s office executes about 6,000 warrants a year, Kraus said.

But, typically, investigators have more information to rely on when tracking someone.

The department prioritizes those warrants based on criminal charges, history and potential danger to the community, Kraus said.

“We carefully consider every warrant that hits our office,” he said. “There are times we simply can’t find somebody.”

According to Brian Englert, president of the Allegheny County Prison Employees Independent Union, at the end of June, there were 153 people people considered to have escaped from alternative housing facilities used by the courts. Those numbers date to 2001. Of those, 34 escaped since the beginning of this year.

Facilities included on the list are halfway houses, like Renewal, which had the majority of the escapes listed.

Because they are not locked-down facilities, Englert said, if a person wants to leave, they can.

“There are some people who are dangerous who walk away every day, and the public doesn’t know about it until something like this happens.”