A Scranton man choked his ex-girlfriend as she was paying respects to her deceased mother at a local church, according to a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
At about 6 p.m. on Thursday, officers were called to St. Peter\u2019s Lutheran Church Annex on Taylor Avenue for the report of an assault.<\/p>\n
According to the criminal complaint:<\/p>\n
When police arrived, Kasara Miller said she had been at the church to pay respects to her mother, who had passed away years ago, when her ex-boyfriend Twyhene Coppage came up behind her and began to choke her.<\/p>\n
Coppage, 44, of 1009 Taylor Ave., then dragged her out of the church and into the parking lot, where he choked her again, this time to the point of unconsciousness.<\/p>\n
Miller told officers she couldn\u2019t breathe for about a minute.<\/p>\n
Coppage then put Miller into the back seat of her Ford Expedition and got into the SUV with her.<\/p>\n
He then tried to slash Miller\u2019s tires with a knife he had stolen from her during the incident.<\/p>\n
Miller was able to get into the driver\u2019s seat and leave the parking lot before calling 911.<\/p>\n
There was no one inside the church at the time of the incident, she said.<\/p>\n
Officers then spoke with the pastor, the Rev. Justin Tigerman. Tigerman said there were no cameras at the church and he wasn\u2019t aware of the incident.<\/p>\n
Tigerman said he believed he had locked the door, but added that there are small groups that meet there during the week.<\/p>\n
Officers then spoke with Coppage at his residence.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged being at the church at about 4 p.m., but denied attacking Miller.<\/p>\n
Coppage turned over Miller\u2019s knife to officers.<\/p>\n
Coppage remains at Lackawanna County Prison in lieu of $25,000 bail.<\/p>\n
A preliminary hearing is scheduled at 11:15 a.m. on Nov. 12 before District Judge Alyce Farrell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Scranton man choked his ex-girlfriend as she was paying respects to her deceased mother at a local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,201,182,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-22724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","9":"tag-lackawanna-county","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-scranton","14":"tag-scranton-headlines","15":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22724","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=22724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}