{"id":233052,"date":"2026-07-01T18:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/233052\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T18:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:46:08","slug":"man-charged-after-alleged-assault-kidnapping-in-lackawanna-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/233052\/","title":{"rendered":"Man charged after alleged assault, kidnapping in Lackawanna County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James Melia faces several charges, including burglary, kidnapping, simple assault, false imprisonment, and robbery.<\/p>\n<p>LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 A man is locked up after an alleged assault and kidnapping in Lackawanna County.<\/p>\n<p>Police say James Melia broke into a home along the 1300 block of Penn Avenue in Scranton early Saturday morning, assaulted a man inside, and threatened to kill him unless a woman and child left with him.<\/p>\n<p>Melia then left the scene with the woman and child against their wishes, later dropping them off at a home in Dickson City, where they were both found safe, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02WHFCtV77Pm3KP3evgnPRq1BwC56JKA7H1PGx41sqPe1BrPHJTzXTYvBYXjejS4W6l&amp;id=100067457661610\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">according to police.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Officers with Scranton and Dickson City found Melia shortly after, tracking him with the help of a K9.<\/p>\n<p>Melia faces a slew of charges, including burglary, kidnapping, simple assault, false imprisonment, and robbery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Melia faces several charges, including burglary, kidnapping, simple assault, false imprisonment, and robbery. LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pa. \u2014&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-233052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233052","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=233052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}