Kidnapping suspect held for court
All charges against a Uniontown man accused of assaulting and kidnapping his girlfriend and then leading police on a chase that injured an officer in January were held for court Wednesday. Keith Aaron Thomas, 21, was charged before Magisterial District Judge Joseph M. George Jr. with aggravated assault, kidnapping, simple assault, terroristic threats, fleeing and eluding police and two counts of criminal mischief.
Thomas had eluded dozens of police officers for two months before he was taken into custody without incident in late March, state police said.
He is accused of assaulting and kidnapping his ex-girlfriend, Monique Sheri King, 23, of Menallen Township from her home in late January and then leading police on a chase through Uniontown after King was able to escape his vehicle.
Thomas also is accused of ramming a state police cruiser with his vehicle, injuring state police trooper George Mrosko.
According to the criminal complaint filed in the case by trooper John Marshall, the incident began when King answered the door of her home in Searights around 10 a.m. Jan. 23 and Thomas began to argue with her.
King told investigators Thomas eventually began to choke her and rammed her head through the bathroom wall, police said.
“I kept asking him to please stop hitting me, and I was crying,” King testified Wednesday at the preliminary hearing before George.
Marshall said Thomas then pulled King by her hair from the home and forced her into the van, where he continued to punch her in the face with his fist any time she cried or screamed.
“He said that if I didn’t shut up he was going to kill me,” King testified.
After driving to Uniontown, King told police that Thomas noticed Mrosko in an unmarked police car behind the van and forced King down onto the seat by her hair, police said.
Mrosko testified Wednesday that he had just left George’s office when he pulled into traffic and saw King “leap” from the vehicle in her pajamas, crying and with red marks on her face.
King was able to reach the passenger door handle as the van slowed for the stop sign at the intersection of South Mt. Vernon Avenue and Lebanon Avenue in South Union Township and escape the van.
“There was a police officer behind us and he (Thomas) noticed and said he was sorry and that he wasn’t going to hurt me, and then I jumped out of the car,” King testified.
According to police, King began to scream for help, and was seen and heard by Mrosko.
Police said Mrosko turned on his emergency lights and Thomas accelerated through the intersection.
“I put my lights on and he went through the intersection and then, the chase was on,” Mrosko said.
Mrosko pursued Thomas’s vehicle through city streets and alleys for eight or nine minutes at high rates of speed, according to police.
After reaching what appeared to be a dead end, police said, Thomas then put the van into reverse and rammed the front of Mrosko’s vehicle, disabling it and injuring the trooper’s left arm.
Thomas then fled the scene by traveling up a grassy embankment and driving through a fence, police said.
A short time after the collision, police recovered Thomas’s vehicle on Tuskegee Terrace, where witnesses told police that Thomas was met by a white minivan and a maroon Pontiac Grand Am, troopers said.
Mrosko was treated at Uniontown Hospital.
King was taken to the Uniontown Hospital, with injuries to her face and neck, according to police.
Police had searched for Thomas for about two months when state police found him while investigating an unrelated incident in Searights, Mrosko said.
George denied a request by Thomas’s defense attorney David Kaiser for a bond reduction in the case.
He was remanded to the Fayette County Prison on $100,000 straight cash bond.