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Two weeks after an intentionally-set fire extensively damaged the Loyalsock Township home she and her husband own at 1951 Inverness Road in Loyalsock Township, Alexandrea Sheffield came to the state police barracks in Montoursville on July 20 for a scheduled interview regarding the on-going investigation into the two-alarm blaze, according to an affidavit.
"About 20 minutes into the interview, Sheffield ceased to answer questions, and asked for an attorney to be present before answering any further questions," the affidavit stated.
What the troopers interviewing her did not know at the time was that Sheffield, 39, had been surreptitiously recording the interview with her cellphone, which was illegal, investigators alleged in the court document.
"I advised Sheffield before she left that I had obtained a search warrant to seize her cellphone," Trooper Nathan Birth, a state police fire marshal, said in the affidavit. "Sheffield immediately grabbed her phone and began trying to manipulate it. I seized the phone from her," the trooper said. The cellphone was placed in "the crime room," where another trooper noticed the phone was "'unlocked' and actively recording via a voice-recording application on the phone," Birth said in the court document. The device had been recording for 23 minutes, and it was alleged that Sheffield turned on the recording just before the interview got underway, according to investigators.
Birth said that there are two signs at the barracks -- one at the front entrance and another in the lobby -- that inform visitors that the use of any and all electronic audio or photographic equipment inside the premises is prohibited "other than for official" state business. "Sheffield never made a request or acknowledged she wanted to make such a recording," the trooper said.
Sheffield, who is in the process of moving with her family to Pangburn, Arkansas, now faces a felony charge of intercept communications, which falls under the Pennsylvania wiretapping and electronic surveillance control act that prohibits recording conversations secretly without a court order. She was arraigned before District Judge Gary Whiteman and is free on $15,000 bail.
The July 5 fire at the couple's vacant home, that Birth ruled as an act of arson earlier this week, caused in excess of $100,000 damage. A relator put the house on the market in May.
In another criminal matter involving Sheffield, she has waived her preliminary hearing before Whiteman on a state police charge of felony shoplifting that stems from her stealing $47 worth of merchandise from Giant on East Third Street in mid-April, it was alleged in court papers. She is free on $15,000 bail in this case as well. Court records state she already has been convicted of shoplifting five times.