Yellow police tape marks off a crime scene.
HARRISBURG, Pa. – Officers are suing the Northern York County Regional Police Commissioner and chief David Lash over the aftermath of a fatal encounter that took the lives of three colleagues.
Logan Chetaitis, Tyler Zeller and Christopher Irwin filed suit in Pennsylvania federal court on Oct. 13, claiming protocol wasn’t followed when three detectives were shot by a suspect known to be clad in camouflage fatigues while carrying an assault rifle.
The plaintiffs say the deaths of Cody Becker, Mark Baker and Isaiah Emenheiser were preventable and are suing over Lash’s refusal to authorize an investigation after. When they complained, one was fired, one was demoted and one was subjected to harassment, the lawsuit says.
“Rather than confront these allegations and permit an honest examination of what had gone wrong, Defendants turned their attention to the officers who were reporting this wrongdoing,” the lawsuit says.
“Once plaintiffs spoke out they became targets of retaliation.”
The shootout occurred in September 2025, following reports from Matthew Ruth’s ex-girlfriend that he was watching her farmhouse at night with an AR-15-style rifle across his chest. Officers and a drone could not locate him, but it was known that he was armed and presented a continuing threat, the suit says.
An arrest warrant cited stalking and other offenses. An investigation of Ruth revealed prior violence and mental-health troubles, the suit says, plus his possession of firearms. He’d been surveilling the farmhouse, where Becker, Baker and Emenheiser were sent without activation of the York County SWAT team, the suit says.
Chief Lash had been opposed to having outside law-enforcement agencies help through the years, the suit claims. Ruth was hiding in the farmhouse and immediately started firing at officers when they opened its doors.
After killing the three officers, Ruth was shot to death by another officer. The operation violated mandatory requirements for high-risk operations, the plaintiffs are claiming.
Irwing, an accreditation manager, sent an email Oct. 1, 2025, requesting a review, while Zeller and Chetaitis, “personally devastated by the deaths of their fellow officers,” brought their concerns to the Board of Commissioners with anonymous letters, though they were later revealed as the authors, the suit says.
Irwin says he was harassed by Lash in the year that followed the shooting, while Zeller was demoted in January over the apprehension of a suspected bank robber and Chetaitis was fired as a result of heightened scrutiny into his actions, the suit says.
