A Pittston man is jailed without bail on kidnapping charges after beating his wife and then loading family members into a minivan for a \u201cvacation\u201d during which he threatened to kill her, according to city police.<\/p>\n
Bernard P. Topa Jr., 38, is accused of abducting his wife along with three children following a domestic assault that began at the family home at 82 Mill St. early Thursday.<\/p>\n
According to the complaint, Topa first began yelling at his wife around 4 a.m. while seeking the keys to their minivan. When she refused to hand them over, Topa grabbed her by the feet and began dragging her around the house, police said.<\/p>\n
A few hours later, Topa began yelling once more and used scissors to cut the woman\u2019s hair while she was curled up in a fetal position on the couch, the charges allege.<\/p>\n
Topa then started beating his wife with a walking stick, causing severe pain and bruising to her right arm, police said.<\/p>\n
She told two of her children who were leaving for school to tell a teacher what was happening in hopes someone would call 911, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
Once those children left, Topa ordered his wife and three other kids into a van, police said. They drove up to the Back Mountain, where Topa threw his wife\u2019s phone out of the car window.<\/p>\n
He told her they were going on a \u201cfamily vacation\u201d and that he could kill her if he wanted, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
The woman then drove to her mother\u2019s house on Wood Street in Scranton. Her mother refused to allow Topa inside and he left, vowing to drive the van off a bridge, police said.<\/p>\n
Police charged Topa with kidnapping, child endangerment, making terroristic threats and simple assault, and he was arrested later Thursday.<\/p>\n
Magisterial District Judge James M. Dixon arraigned Topa on the charges and denied bail, deeming him to be a danger to the victims.<\/p>\n
Topa was being held at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility with a preliminary hearing scheduled for Sept. 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Pittston man is jailed without bail on kidnapping charges after beating his wife and then loading family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,182,803,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-283740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","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\/283740","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=283740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}