K-9 Units’ Helpful Impact For Various Crimes

Story posted April 12, 2023 in CommRadio, News by Natalie Simone

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Sergeant McDaniel, from Penn State’s police department, shared the specificities of K-9 units at University Park.

“We have K-9 officers currently. Our dogs are retired and, unfortunately, we just lost one due to an accident not too long ago. So currently we don’t have any active K-9s,” McDaniel said.

The Pennsylvania State Police provides K-9 units to any Pennsylvania police department who do not have their own K-9 teams, including Centre County.

The University Park Police has eight specializations, which include K-9, bomb technicians, drone units, and community-oriented policing.

For the University Park Police Department, they use k-9 units for cases including ordnance and explosives. “So that would be if there were a threat and that someone thought there was a bomb planted somewhere, for instance,” McDaniel said.

Only a couple of hours away from University Park, in Oil City, Pennsylvania, a missing woman was found dead on March 27 on the Oil City Bike Trail. Marcy Suzette Nellis was found by the State Police with multiple specialized units assisting, including five K-9 teams from various counties.

Within the first 12 hours of the missing persons report, two K-9 units began the search in Oil City. After hours of searching, three more K-9 units were added to the search team at 8 am.

However, K-9 units were not the only search teams looking for Nellis. More than a hundred personnel searched, a helicopter, night-vision drones, boats, UTV’s and certified Search and Rescue teams, which were from Oil City Police Department and neighboring counties’ departments.

Marcy Suzette Nellis was sexually assaulted and ultimately died of asphyxiation from manual strangulation. A rape kit was conducted by a foresnic team, David Bosley of Oil City, PA was arrested after a DNA match.

David Bosley was arrested on 10:43 am on April 6 and was charged with homicide, rape by forcible compulsion, aggravated indecent assault, and kidnapping.


Natalie Simone is a first-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, email nvs5790@psu.edu.