WILKES-BARRE \u2013 A judge dismissed domestic violence-related charges against Pittston Area Superintendent Kevin Booth during a preliminary hearing at the Luzerne County Central Court on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Luzerne County Assistant District Attorney Julian Truskowski told the court that the superintendent\u2019s wife, Jessica Booth, no longer wanted to proceed in pressing charges, especially given Kevin Booth\u2019s completion of both rehabilitation and anger-management programs. Truskowski said the commonwealth was asking that the charges against Booth be dropped.<\/p>\n
Luzerne County Magisterial District Judge Joseph Carmody, after having Jessica Booth assure the court that she did not want to proceed, she was not being coerced, and she was not under the influence of any substances, dismissed the charges without further comment.<\/p>\n
Jessica and Kevin Booth both declined comment as they left the courtroom. Kevin Booth\u2019s attorney, Kurt Lynott, also declined comment.<\/p>\n
Truskowski said after the hearing that prosecutors had little choice in dropping the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe didn\u2019t want to proceed, so our hands are sort of tied,\u201d Truskowski said.<\/p>\n
Pittston police arrested Booth on Oct. 5 after he arrived at home and was alleged to have choked his wife. Police said Booth denied the allegation of domestic violence after having initially told law enforcement he had \u201cno idea\u201d what had happened. Booth, 55, was subsequently arraigned on one charge of simple assault and one charge of harassment and released on $2,500 unsecured bail. After his arrest and release, Booth secured admission into an inpatient treatment facility.<\/p>\n
Jessica Booth filed for divorce Oct. 27, alleging her husband\u2019s conduct had made her \u201ccondition intolerable and life burdensome.\u201d She had also petitioned the court for a temporary protection-from-abuse order against the superintendent, though that order has since been withdrawn at her request.<\/p>\n
Since their superintendent\u2019s arrest, Pittston Area School District officials have steadfastly refused to comment on Booth\u2019s employment status, citing district privacy policies around personnel matters. Pittston Area officials have also declined to say whether a district health insurance policy covered Booth\u2019s rehabilitation treatment. The Pittston Area Board of Education did, however, place an anonymous employee on administrative leave Oct. 21 during the first school board meeting following Booth\u2019s arrest. Assistant Superintendent John Haas has taken what had been the superintendent\u2019s role at school board meetings, serving in Booth\u2019s stead.<\/p>\n
The school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WILKES-BARRE \u2013 A judge dismissed domestic violence-related charges against Pittston Area Superintendent Kevin Booth during a preliminary hearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,227,182,803,139,28,2485,178,180,179,802],"class_list":["post-128569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-education","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pittston","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-cvc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}