{"id":276164,"date":"2026-09-01T01:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T01:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/276164\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T01:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T01:28:08","slug":"man-with-samurai-sword-tried-to-enter-poconos-church-police-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/276164\/","title":{"rendered":"Man with samurai sword tried to enter Poconos church, police say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Luzerne County man tried to enter a Poconos church Sunday morning while armed with a \u201csamurai sword,\u201d according to authorities.<\/p>\n<p>The man, Peter Gershon Wonsia, 30, of White Haven,  tried to enter Pocono Lake Bible Church on Route 940 in Tobyhanna Township, Monroe County, about 11 a.m., Pocono Mountain Regional police said.<\/p>\n<p>He was asked to leave after he refused to remove his weapon, and said he \u201ccannot leave,\u201d and \u201cneeded to go in,\u201d the department said in a news release. The church was placed into lockdown while the man was outside.<\/p>\n<p>Police arrested Wonsia and charged him with misdemeanor offenses of making terroristic threats, simple assault, disorderly conduct and having a prohibited weapon. He was sent to Monroe County Jail under $25,000 bail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Luzerne County man tried to enter a Poconos church Sunday morning while armed with a \u201csamurai sword,\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,182,803,2941,6023,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-276164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-monroe-county","tag-mount-pocono","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276164","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=276164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}