Greensburg parolee charged with assault, strangulation after battered woman shows up at police station

A man who was released from state prison after pleading guilty to brutally assaulting a woman in Latrobe is now charged with another alleged attack in Greensburg.

A woman went to the city police station around 8 p.m. Saturday to report that Glenn J. Whittier assaulted her at his Walnut Avenue apartment, where she said he had kept her for five hours and would not let her leave, Patrolman Jonathan Murphy reported in court documents.

Murphy said that the woman went to Whittier’s apartment at about 3 p.m. to tell him she was leaving and he began assaulting and choking her. Murphy said she was interviewed in the police station “holding an ice pack on her neck and had red markings and scratching on her neck, had swelling on the left side of her face and dried blood on the left side of her mouth and face.”

“At one point in the assault, (she) said she was slammed to the couch and (Whittier) smothered her with a couch pillow telling her he was going to kill her,” Murphy reported the woman told investigators.

She told police she lost consciousness multiple times as she was assaulted and choked. At one point, a neighbor came to inquire “what was happening,” but the woman was unable to escape during the interruption, Murphy reported.

She told police that she fled the apartment “in her socks and carrying her shoes” when Whittier went to use the bathroom. Murphy said the woman drove her car directly to the police station.

Whittier, 49, formerly of Latrobe, is charged with aggravated assault, harassment, terroristic threats, reckless endangerment, simple assault, strangulation and unlawful restraint.

In March 2015, Latrobe police arrested Whittier, charging him with holding a woman captive for four days in his Spring Street apartment, repeatedly beating her with a hammer and pouring bleach into her eyes, according to court documents.

Police reported that the woman was found lying on the floor with cuts on her nose, forehead and the back of her head. Police said she had slurred speech and was unsure of her surroundings before being taken to Excela Health Latrobe Hospital for treatment.

In 2016, Whittier pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, with other counts dropped as part of a plea agreement, court records show. He was sentenced to serve up to five years in prison. He was paroled in January 2019, according to the state Department of Corrections.

He was ordered held in the county jail Saturday on $2,500 bond. A preliminary hearing is scheduled Feb. 4.