{"id":312962,"date":"2026-10-23T21:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T21:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312962\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T21:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T21:40:08","slug":"pennsylvania-man-accused-of-shooting-stabbing-father-pleads-not-guilty-in-first-court-appearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/312962\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania man accused of shooting, stabbing father pleads not guilty in first court appearance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, man <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/man-charged-killing-father-cook-township\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-absolute=\"true\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">accused of murdering his father<\/a> in August was in court for the first time on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Pennsylvania State Police say that 28-year-old Cody Lawrence was charged with allegedly shooting and stabbing his father, 59-year-old Edward Lawrence Jr., after the two got into an argument at their home in Cook Township.<\/p>\n<p>State police said Cody told them that he saw his father reaching for a gun in his waistband, and the two of them fought over it before it went off. Cody also said a pocketknife fell out of his sweatshirt during the struggle, so his father may have been stabbed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, state police said that throughout their investigation, &#8220;there was never a plausible explanation of self-defense.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the court room in Ligonier Borough on Friday, the hearing didn&#8217;t last long.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The judge asked Lawrence&#8217;s attorney Brian Aston, how his client was pleading to the one felony count of criminal homicide and Aston replied, &#8220;Not guilty.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The proceedings were over in less than five minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Cody Lawrence is currently being held at the Westmoreland County Prison without bail. He is due back in court for a formal arraignment on Wednesday, Dec. 2.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, man accused of murdering his father in August was in court for the first&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[457,28,30,29,220,5910],"class_list":["post-312962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-homicide","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-shooting","tag-westmoreland-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312962","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=312962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}