A Schuylkill County man told police an unknown vehicle pulled alongside him and shot him as he walked home along Route 209 last summer. Investigators now say he shot himself, and that he did it with a pistol stolen from another man’s storage unit.
Howard Ash IV, 47, of Port Carbon, is charged with two felony counts of theft by unlawful taking, two felony counts of receiving stolen property, and a misdemeanor count of making a false report.
Troopers were called to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pottsville just before 5 a.m. on Aug. 28 last year for a report of a man with a gunshot wound. Ash told police a friend had dropped him off in Port Carbon and that he was walking home to his residence in the 500 block of E. Norwegian St. along Route 209 when an unknown vehicle drove toward him and he was shot. Ash said the same friend happened to be driving by shortly afterward and took him to the hospital.
The friend gave police a different account. He told investigators Ash shot himself accidentally while the two were at Ash’s home, and that Ash’s girlfriend was there at the time, according to police.
Troopers obtained a search warrant for the E. Norwegian St. residence later that day. Two pistols were seized, a German Sport Gun Model 1911 .22-caliber and a Radom Polan 9 mm, police say. A records check showed both had been purchased by and registered to another man, according to police.
Ash was taken to the State Police-Schuylkill Haven barracks and interviewed after waiving his Miranda rights, police say. He identified the Radom Polan as the gun he shot himself with and said he was moving it from his pocket to a desk drawer when it discharged, striking him in the leg and hip area. Ash told investigators a man he knew only by a first name had given him the firearms for protection, but he could not provide any further information about that man’s identity, police say.
In April, police interviewed the registered owner of the guns and a second man at the Schuylkill Haven barracks. The owner told police he learned from Ash’s girlfriend that Ash had taken the firearms. Both men said that in August 2025, Ash and the second man had been taking the owner’s firearms to consignment shops to sell on his behalf. The guns were returned to the owner’s storage unit at a facility on Industrial Park Rd. in East Norwegian Township, police say.
The second man told investigators Ash handed him the long guns first, which he hid inside the unit, and handed over a storage bin containing the pistols last, according to police. That was the last time either man was at the unit before learning the guns were gone, police say. Both discovered the firearms missing when they went to move to a different unit, police say.
Both men denied giving Ash the firearms or permission to take them.
Charges in this case are pending against Ash. There’s currently a warrant out for his arrest but Ash has been in Schuylkill County Prison since July 22. That’s when Port Carbon police charged him with felony strangulation, misdemeanor simple assault and a summary count of harassment. Police say he punched his live-in girlfriend in the face and choked her with a cell phone cord after she refused to perform a sex act. Magisterial District Judge Anthony Kilker set bail in that case at $50,000.
Ash was also arrested June 9, when police say he had a bag of methamphetamine in his pants pocket. Hours after that arrest, he represented himself in Schuylkill County Court and was acquitted of a DUI charge stemming from a traffic stop the previous year. Earlier this year, he was charged with assaulting a woman at the same Port Carbon apartment. Those charges were dismissed.
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