PITTSBURGH —
An off-duty state trooper is being credited with foiling a Westmoreland County convenience store heist – and with solving a social club robbery allegedly committed by the same suspect last week.
State police in Greensburg said Trooper Josh Giran was off duty when he pulled into a parking lot across from a
BP 7-Eleven convenience store in New Stanton shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday.
That’s when Giran saw Nathan Grippo, 20, of New Stanton, pull a mask over his face and follow a clerk into the store, where he stole $107 at gunpoint, police said.
Giran pulled his weapon and confronted Grippo, who surrendered as he came out of the store, police said.
Grippo also is charged with robbing a Loyal Order of Moose Lodge in nearby Youngwood on Jan. 4.
New Stanton and Youngwood are a few miles south of Greensburg, where Giran, 36, a 13-year veteran trooper, is based.
A criminal complaint filed early Thursday said the suspect in the Moose robbery wore clothes similar to those Grippo wore Wednesday night.
Grippo confessed to the Moose robbery when asked about the similarities, police said.
Grippo was awaiting arraignment Thursday and didn’t yet have an attorney, according to online court records.
Blair man faces 800 porn, child sex counts
ALTOONA – City police said an Altoona man jailed on 837 child pornography and child-sex counts abused a
6-year-old girl while a 3-year-old girl watched and made the girls prance around in skimpy, sparkly outfits as part of what he told them was the “fashion model game.”
Online court records don’t list an attorney for 50-year-old David Pulcine, who was arrested late Wednesday by city police.
The Altoona Mirror reported Thursday that 837 of the 845 charges against Pulcine stem from child-sex images found on his computer in June.
That investigation led police to the alleged abuse of the girls in 2008 or 2009, for which he’s charged with two counts each of aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault, child endangerment and corruption of minors.
Pulcine faces a preliminary hearing on Wednesday.
Attacker who ran out of gas pleads guilty
HIBBS – A Fayette County man who called his mother because he ran out of gas after assaulting a woman in his van may serve his sentence in a boot camp program for younger offenders.
Anthony Cramer, 24, of McClellandtown, is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 14 after pleading guilty before a county judge.
The 48-year-old woman said she was raped before Cramer assaulted her, fracturing her skull, ribs, nose and tearing her spleen.
But prosecutors dropped all of the sexual assault charges in exchange for Cramer’s plea to aggravated and simple assault and a recommended sentence of 21⁄2 to five years incarceration in the Sept. 13, 2010, attack.
The woman ran into the woods to escape and overheard Cramer calling his mother to bring him gas before two people brought some fuel and both vehicles drove away.
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