{"id":309620,"date":"2026-10-19T03:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T03:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/309620\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T03:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T03:44:15","slug":"lackawanna-county-jury-finds-maxwell-hawkins-guilty-of-first-degree-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/309620\/","title":{"rendered":"Lackawanna County jury finds Maxwell Hawkins guilty of first-degree murder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF)  \u2014 A Lackawanna County jury found Maxwell Hawkins guilty of first-degree murder and related counts late Friday in the killing of his wife, Nicole Vega, in Dunmore.<\/p>\n<p>District Attorney Brian Gallagher said the verdict followed a trial that ended Friday. Vega was shot and killed at her home in January 2025. <\/p>\n<p>Gallagher thanked Chief Deputy District Attorney Sara Varela, Assistant District Attorney Danielle Guari, Dunmore Police Detectives Mike Lydon and Gene Mentz, and Pennsylvania State Police Master Trooper James Hitchcock for their work on the case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe public does not always see the tremendous amount of work that goes into homicide investigations, prosecutions, and trials,\u201d Gallagher wrote. He said the team pursued the case through trial rather than resolving it with a plea agreement.<\/p>\n<p>Gallagher also expressed sympathy for Vega\u2019s daughters, saying they \u201cwill never see their mother again.\u201d He said Hawkins \u201cwill rightfully spend the rest of his life in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A formal sentencing date has not been announced. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 A Lackawanna County jury found Maxwell Hawkins guilty of first-degree murder and related&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-309620","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\/309620","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=309620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}