An intoxicated, 33-year-old Scranton man punched an officer and continually pushed and pulled away from law enforcement officials early Friday morning, police said.<\/p>\n
Lackawanna County dispatchers received a call around 2:36 a.m. for a male \u2014 later identified as BJ Xavier Wilkins-Athill \u2014 lying on the sidewalk near a car dealership on North Washington Avenue in Scranton, according to a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
Upon arrival, officers found Wilkins-Athill and detected a strong odor of alcohol, police said.<\/p>\n
Officers announced their presence several times and shook Wilkins-Athill\u2019s shoulder and arm in an attempt to wake him up, but nothing worked, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
When he awoke, Wilkins-Athill punched an officer in the chest and attempted to swing at him again before Patrolman Andrew Hudak threw himself on the man\u2019s back, police said.<\/p>\n
The man resisted by pulling his arms away from police when officers tried to place him in handcuffs, according to the complaint. Wilkins-Athill also refused to provide personal information to officers.<\/p>\n
Additionally, he resisted when officers tried to place him in a transport van by pushing them and using his legs to push off the van, leading officers to place him in leg shackles.<\/p>\n
Officers opted to transport Wilkins-Athill in a patrol cruiser due to the high risk of possible injury to him and the officers if they continued to try to get him into the transport van because of his resistance, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
Wilkins-Athill continued to resist before officers eventually got his body inside the patrol car, police said.<\/p>\n
He also initially refused to leave the vehicle at police headquarters and resisted as officers attempted to place him in a holding cell, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
Police charged Wilkins-Athill with aggravated assault, resisting arrest, obstructing law enforcement, disorderly conduct and public drunkenness.<\/p>\n
The address on Wilkins-Athill\u2019s driver\u2019s license is listed as 156 N. Lincoln Ave., but an officer was unable to find the location, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
As of Monday, Wilkins-Athill remains in Lackawanna County Prison in lieu of $75,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 11 at 10:45 a.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An intoxicated, 33-year-old Scranton man punched an officer and continually pushed and pulled away from law enforcement officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-258486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258486","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=258486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}