Weaver showed desire for police work

Educators say trooper had an open mind, kept ‘people’s best interests ar heart’

A handful of photographs posted online over the past five years trace Landon Weaver's busy, promising life since high school.

First sporting slightly shaggy hair, smiling with his sweetheart at Central High School's 2012 commencement. Then wearing an Indiana University of Pennsylvania sweatshirt as he pursued a criminology degree and planned a wedding.  Finally -- in just the past few months -- clean-shaven with a military bearing in a gray Pennsylvania State Police uniform.

Weaver, 23 was shot dead Friday evening as he responded to a protection-from-abuse order violation at a rural Huntingdon County home.

His killer, Jason Robison of Hesston, died hours later during a confrontation with police at an uninhabited mobile home.

Weaver's death drew a rare surge of public grief in the region -- particularly in East Freedom and Morrisons Cove, where he grew up and spent his life.

Friends and acquaintances shared stories online, while former teachers and coworkers remembered him as a hardworking, intelligent man with a bright future.

"He had people's best interests at heart," said Joe Logan, who taught Weaver at Central High School and recalled his desire to work as a police officer. "That was something he had his mind set on."

Logan, who teaches sociology, U.S. history and other subjects, said the small classes and small-town mindset at Spring Cove School District ensured just about everyone Weaver's age knew one another.

"Everybody leans on one another out here. It's something. … Anytime something like this occurs, the whole community comes together to help each other out."

A photograph in a 2012 Spring Cove newsletter shows Weaver with his girlfriend Macy Gottshall, smiling together in their graduation robes at the district's June 4 baccalaureate ceremony. Sometime afterward, they would set a wedding date: four years later to the day.

"You know the kids that are always going to be together after high school. They were that," Logan recalled. "You could just tell. You could tell by their mannerisms, the way they talked to one another."

After high school, Weaver pursued a criminology degree at IUP. Most students who want to join a police force take 60 credits -- just enough to secure a job -- but Weaver was one class short of a full bachelor's degree, his adviser, Assistant Professor Jon A. Cooper, said.

"He was an exceptional student. And I'm not just saying that. He was on the dean's list almost every semester," Cooper said.

Weaver, soft-spoken and careful with his words in class, took an elective course Cooper teaches on a sometimes sensitive topic: the effect of race and class on crime.

Cooper was blunt in his description of the class.

"Usually I have to sit down with my students and basically teach them how not to sound like (expletive)s when they talk about these topics," he said. "But (Weaver) was never an issue. I never had to remind him how to be civil. He was always open-minded, always thoughtful -- he didn't often speak without thinking."

Weaver enlisted in the state police in December 2015, officials said, and graduated in June with 59 fellow recruits.

When he got his assignment to Troop G, the large region based at the Hollidaysburg barracks, he emailed his adviser with the good news and a vow to finish his degree as soon as he got a chance.

June was a busy month for Weaver. He married Gottshall in Williamsburg; photographs show the couple beaming on their wedding day, flowers in his new wife's hands.

It would be less than seven months before Weaver was murdered in Huntingdon County.

Hours after he died -- as his fellow troopers searched the woods for the gunman -- Gov. Tom Wolf issued a statement praising Weaver's service.

"Landon will always be remembered for his bravery, his sacrifice and his willingness to serve," Wolf said. "The state police are our best and bravest Pennsylvanians, who risk their lives to keep all our families safe."

His body, originally sent to a facility in Allentown, crossed the state with a police escort Saturday. Uniformed troopers and emergency responders, their vehicles' lights flashing, lined the road as the procession passed the Huntingdon barracks en route to John K. Bolger Funeral Home in Martinsburg.

Friends are set to be received 12-3 p.m. and 5-8 p.m. Wednesday at the Jaffa Shrine Center in Altoona, with guests asked to enter the viewing by the rear 22nd Street handicap entrance. A funeral service is set for 11 a.m. Thursday at the Jaffa Shrine, and interment with full police honors is scheduled afterward.

In an update on the investigation Sunday, the state police alluded to the surge of support that followed Weaver's death. A fund will be arranged to support his family, representatives said.

"I'm beside myself with grief and sadness," Logan, Weaver's former teacher at Central, said in a written post shortly after his death. "This wasn't Chicago, L.A. or any other big city in America, but here in our own backyard."

Mirror Staff Writer Ryan Brown is at 946-7457.