A criminal call hearing is scheduled for a Greensburg man charged with a crime spree in 2023.
President Judge Thomas Bianco will preside over the meeting concerning the case of 37-year-old Michael Aaron Whitfield. Police said on July 12th, he attacked a woman in the parking lot of Keeper of the Flame in Blairsville, cutting her face and neck with a box cutter before taking her SUV. A nine-year-old in the vehicle bailed out as he started to drive away. After fleeing Blairsville, he stopped in Derry to rob an ice cream shop and BBQ food wagon before ditching the SUV and taking a pickup truck and leaving the area. He was found in Georgia the next day.
Along with the charges in Westmoreland County, he faces two counts each of attempted homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment along with single counts of attempted kidnapping, attempted kidnapping to facilitate a felony, robbery of a motor vehicle, robbery-inflicting serious bodily injury, and terroristic threats.
Criminal Call is designed to update the court and the parties involved on the progress of a case. Proceedings are usually postponed to a later date, but on occasion, guilty pleas have been entered at the Criminal Call phase.
