CLEARFIELD – A Philipsburg man who fought with probation officers and sheriff deputies waived his right to a preliminary hearing Wednesday during centralized court.
Joseph Wayne Oswalt, 31, was charged with felony counts of aggravated assault-attempts to cause bodily injury, aggravated assault-fear of serious bodily injury, and disarming law enforcement officer, as well as two counts of simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, resisting arrest, flight to avoid apprehension, institutional vandalism, and three counts of disorderly conduct in connection with his actions at the Clearfield County Courthouse Annex on Nov. 9 at 11:52 a.m.
His case now moves on to the court of common pleas. His bail was lowered from $50,000, to $25,000 at the time of the hearing but he remains in the county jail.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, police were dispatched to the annex for a disturbance. When they arrived on the scene, deputies from the sheriff’s office had already taken the defendant, Oswalt into custody.
An investigation revealed that Oswalt was reporting that morning to his probation officer who was aware he had an active warrant through the sheriff’s department. She contacted the deputies who arrived within minutes.
When they tried to take him into custody, he stated, “I’m not going to jail!” and tried to flee. However, he was not able to get past all the probation officers and deputies to get to the door.
Oswalt reportedly fought with two of them and tried to get to the door as they tried to get him into custody.
As Oswalt resisted, a deputy’s taser holster broke, causing it to come off his belt.
“This was particularly dangerous because Oswalt could have easily accessed the weapon,” it says in the criminal complaint.
At this point another employee called for police assistance.
Eventually they were able to take him into custody by placing him in a transport belt with handcuffs and ankle shackles.
But he refused to walk on his own and had to be carried outside to the sheriff’s vehicle. On the way he “violently thrashed his body around and purposely struck his own head against the wall several times.”
The wall did suffer damage due to his actions.
Problems continued when they arrived at the county jail, where he refused to get out of the vehicle. The deputies, police officers and corrections officers carried him out as he physically began to fight again, the criminal complaint states.
During this fight, Oswalt threw his body into one of the police officers causing a loaded pistol magazine to fly out of his duty belt and land of the ground.
“This was now the second time that Oswalt’s actions had caused a law enforcement official to temporarily lose control of a weapon or related accessory.”
Next, he reportedly tried to bite one of the officers. It took a total of 12 enforcement officers to control Oswalt, extract him from the vehicle and place him into a cell.
One of the deputies suffered an injury to his right pinky finger, which was actively bleeding, according to the report.
