CLEARFIELD – A Philipsburg man who fought with probation officers and sheriff deputies was sentenced to state prison Monday during colloquy court.
Joseph Wayne Oswalt, 31, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and resisting arrest for his actions at the Clearfield County Courthouse Annex on Nov. 9, according to information from the probation office.
President Judge Fredric J. Ammerman sentenced him to serve 24 months to five years in state prison.
He was also given an additional term of six months to two years in prison for a probation violation on a previous trademark counterfeiting charge.
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 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 on 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.