The man who says his lifelong friend beat him unconscious on the streets of Schuylkill Haven last week testified that Joshua King, 40, kept saying “He’s the butcher” prior to the assault.
King is facing a felony charge of aggravated assault and a misdemeanor count of simple assault. He’s being held on 10% of $20,000 bail at Schuylkill County Prison. Following Tuesday’s hearing, Senior Magisterial District Judge Casimir Kosciolek held all charges for Schuylkill County Court of Common Pleas.
Micah Smith appeared at King’s preliminary hearing on Tuesday morning in Orwigsburg. Sporting two black eyes and facing more medical tests, he says, Smith recalled the July 9 night when he was called to a home in Schuylkill Haven to tell his lifelong friend, King, that he had to get out of a place he was staying.
Smith said he arrived at that N. Garfield Ave. location and walked in after knocking. For a while, Smith said he and King were drinking a few glasses of whiskey and the atmosphere was friendly. However, when they were walking toward a bathroom in the home, Smith told King that a person named Brandon – whom he said pays the rent where King was staying – wanted him to leave.
Just prior to this, Smith said King started acting strangely and was repeatedly making his claim about being “the butcher.”
This news angered King, Smith testified, and “He just turned around and clocked me.” Smith said he got knocked out temporarily but got up and left, retreating across the street to King’s sister, who lives across the street. Smith said he wasn’t there long, just enough to clean off the blood on his face and he went back across the street.
The reason he went back to where he’d just been knocked out, Smith said, was because his High Point pistol was missing.
“I didn’t want to leave it with Josh,” Smith said. On cross-examination by King’s attorney, Public Defender Nicholas Watt, Smith said he brought the gun, which he said was not loaded, because “I know (Josh) and I was protecting myself. He’s unstable.”
Originally, police wrote in their affidavit that at some point while Smith and King were drinking, Smith pulled the gun from his hoodie, placed it on a table, and said, “You’re going to do what I say or else.” At Tuesday’s hearing, Smith denied saying that.
When Smith got back across the street, King was in the front door and denied having his friend’s pistol but offered to help look for it. Smith said they began looking outside, heading toward a park near where King was staying on N. Garfield Ave. However, what Smith said happened next leads him to believe King was just luring him to another location. That’s when he said King started assaulting him repeatedly. He believes it lasted more than a minute but he was again knocked out.
“After the first couple of hits, I was completely out,” he testified, adding that he remembers telling King, “Stop. Please stop.” Smith said he remembers King saying, “go to sleep” repeatedly as he landed blow after blow on him.
Smith said he remembers a Schuylkill Haven Police officer being the next person he saw after coming to but went in and out of consciousness several times as he was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pottsville and then to a Cedar Crest trauma center.
“My whole face was covered in blood,” he said.
At the trauma center – where he stayed for close to two days – Smith said he was diagnosed with inter-cerebral hemmorhages and is due back at the hospital on Wednesday for more scans.
Kosciolek denied Watt’s motion to dismiss the charges against King. Watt argued that Smith showing up with a gun that was visible to King “made it readily apparent he had the capacity to do harm” and said his client’s actions were intended to reduce the danger he believed he faced that night.
First Deputy District Attorney Mike Stine said Watt’s argument wasn’t applicable for a preliminary hearing and should be presented to a jury, should the case ever get to trial.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
Schuylkill County Man Jailed After Allegedly Beating Lifelong Friend’s Face For More Than a Minute
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