A Scranton woman told police her boyfriend choked her during a dispute over the use of a vehicle, causing her to feel like she was drowning and unable to breath, according to a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
Yeferson Varela, 723 S. Irving Ave, faces a felony charge of strangulation, as well as a misdemeanor charges of simple assault.<\/p>\n
According to the criminal complaint, city police were called to the home at about 10 p.m. on Aug. 1 for the report of someone, later identified as Varela, refusing to return a vehicle to its owners.<\/p>\n
When police arrived, they spoke with Yanary Hernandez who said Varela, 25, refused to return her brother\u2019s vehicle. But, officers determined the incident was a civil dispute rather than a criminal matter. Hernandez told officers the argument originally stemmed from an earlier incident during which Varela threw her against a wall and choked her.<\/p>\n
Officers noted scratches on Hernandez\u2019s neck and chest.<\/p>\n
Hernandez\u2019s two children said they were in another room when they heard a loud bang followed by their mother yelling. The two called for their older brother to help.<\/p>\n
The older sibling told police he had seen Varela with both hands around his mother\u2019s neck and had stepped in to intervene.<\/p>\n
He told police Varela tried to punch him, but missed and then left the residence.<\/p>\n
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Sept. 28 before District Judge Joanne Corbett.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Scranton woman told police her boyfriend choked her during a dispute over the use of a vehicle,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,182,139,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-273451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273451","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=273451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}