Paden Frey is charged in the strangling death of officer Michael McGeehan.

An arrest and a set of charges are process. They are not a conviction, and the accounts used here do not describe a plea. Police say Frey and McGeehan were in a fight at a Cummings Township cabin when Frey strangled McGeehan. An autopsy found manual strangulation by forearm compression of the neck, and the death was ruled a homicide. Those are charging facts and medical findings as reported. A court still has to decide what the Commonwealth can prove.

CBS Pittsburgh reported that Paden Frey, 25, was arrested at his home in Cogan Station in connection with the death of Michael McGeehan, 44. The Williamsport Sun-Gazette identified him as Paden Edward Frey and reported Lycoming Regional Police detectives took him to the Lycoming County Prison on Wednesday afternoon after arraignment. Court records and those outlets list charges of third-degree murder, strangulation, involuntary manslaughter, and recklessly endangering another person. He was committed with no bail. An arraignment and a no-bail order are custody conditions. They are not a verdict.

CBS Pittsburgh and the Sun-Gazette reported that McGeehan, a husband and father of five sons and a 12-year veteran of the Middlesex Township Police Department in Cumberland County, was found dead after first responders were called to Dam Run Road in Cummings Township in the early morning hours of July 11. The Sun-Gazette, citing an affidavit by Detective Jordan Mahosky, put the call at about 2:40 a.m. and said McGeehan was pronounced dead at the scene on the front porch of a hunting cabin near Waterville. The affidavit account, as the paper summarized it, describes a family gathering that turned into a struggle after McGeehan was described as extremely intoxicated. Those affidavit allegations are what police put in the charging papers. They are not findings entered after a trial.

CBS Pittsburgh reported that a joint investigation concluded Frey and McGeehan were involved in a fight when Frey strangled McGeehan. The Sun-Gazette reported the autopsy at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown on July 13 found death by manual strangulation by forearm compression of the neck, and that the coroner's office ruled the death a homicide. The paper also reported Frey is a cousin to McGeehan's wife, Nicole. Middlesex Township Police, in a July Facebook statement quoted by CBS Pittsburgh, called McGeehan a devoted husband and father. A preliminary hearing has been reported for Oct. 21. A hearing date is process. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.