Woman testifies about deadly Penn Hills home invasion
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A Penn Hills woman who was terrorized for hours during a 2018 home invasion described to a jury on Monday finding her fiance partially nude and hogtied after she was able to free herself from being bound by zip ties.
Monica McWilson said she had been sleeping in the couple’s home on Runnete Street early on Sept. 3 when she heard noises coming from the bedroom of her daughter, who was not home.
She walked into the hallway and was confronted by a man she had seen a couple times in the neighborhood.
That man, later identified as Charles Pershing, 40, also of Penn Hills, is on trial this week for the beating death of Loxley Johns, 65. Johns died on Sept. 17, 2018, two weeks after the attack.
McWilson said she struck Pershing with a flat iron but that he overpowered her, blindfolded her with a bra and then bound her hands with zip ties. She estimated she was left that way from about 4 a.m. until after 7. She told police that during the attack, Pershing said he was a Navy seal and could do anything he wanted to her.
McWilson told the jury that, Pershing asked her “‘Where’s the stuff?’” during the attack.
“But I didn’t know what he was talking about,” she said. Then he told her he knew she had a daughter and that “If I opened my mouth, he’d cut her [expletive] tongue out and feed it to me,” she testified.
She said she was terrified, and that she offered her attacker her car and anything else he might want.
“I offered everything as I begged for my life,” McWilson said. “I gave him my wedding ring. I gave him everything.”
When he left, she said, he told her she couldn’t call 911 for 20 minutes.
McWilson said she waited for a while, and then was able to free herself from the zip ties with a pen knife on Johns’ night stand.
When she got downstairs, she found Johns hogtied on the floor. He was breathing, she said, but not conscious.
She grabbed a butcher knife and baseball bat in case the attacker came back and called 911.
In the 911 recording, which was played for the jury, McWilson can be heard begging for help.
“‘Please, please, send somebody,’” she said. “‘Oh, God, please. Oh, lord, oh, lord, please.”
McWilson told the call taker that the attacker was a white man. She testified that she had seen him in the neighborhood a couple times but did not know his name.
Once Pershing was identified, he was arrested on an outstanding warrant for child support on Sept. 4.
At the time of the arrest, police said Pershing was carrying McWilson’s daughter’s red duffel bag, which had been taken from her house. Inside, officers found several credit cards, Social Security cards and other identification taken from the home.
Allegheny County Police Det. Nicole DePaoli testified police found cell phones taken from the house and zip ties during a search of Pershing’s home, which was less than a half-mile away.
The detective also described the crime scene to the jury, highlighting images where Johns’ blood was found on the outside of the house. There were signs of an attack from the front porch — where a lawn chair was shattered — into the house, where items were strewn throughout, DePaoli said.
Police believe Johns was attacked as he was walking into the home that night.
When he was arrested, Pershing had a black eye, which he told detectives he’d gotten in a fight Downtown. Authorities believe, however, it was from McWilson striking him with her flat iron.
On cross-examination, defense attorney Christopher Joseph Marsili asked McWilson why she did not try to cut the zip ties off Johns when she found him.
“It was all a blur,” she said. “I was truly in shock. I was afraid.”