Cops: Attacker told 3 victims in Derry Township apartment, ‘You’re all going to die tonight’
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Cathy Tarr grimaced Monday inside the still-blood spattered kitchen and living room of a Derry Township apartment where her sister, niece and a family friend were brutally attacked by an intruder early Sunday.
Her sister, Karen Short; niece, Amber Short, 18; and friend Adam Rousson of Montreal, Canada, all remained in Conemaugh Memorial Hospital in Johnstown, where they were taken after the 2 a.m attack in the West 4th Street apartment. Tarr said her sister and Rousson are in the intensive care unit for treatment of multiple stab wounds as well as for injuries sustained from being beaten with a metal baseball bat and bitten.
“Amber wasn’t stabbed, but she was beaten, and he also bit her really bad right around her neck,” Tarr said. “It was a horrific attack, as you can tell from looking at all of this.
“I want you to see this because it shouldn’t have happened.”
State police captured the alleged intruder, Nicholas A. McIntyre, 26, of Latrobe, about noon Sunday during a ground and air search near Latrobe.
District Judge Mark Bilik ordered McIntyre be held in the county jail without bail. He was arraigned Monday on three counts each of attempted homicide, aggravated assault, harassment, reckless endangerment and terroristic threats along with two counts of theft and burglary.
Karen Short told her sister last week she planned to call the county probation office because McIntyre was bothering her daughter again, Tarr said.
“He’s been in jail for contacting her before and would even write her letters from inside jail,” Tarr said. “He was an obsessive stalker. It’s been going on for two years since they broke up, and they even had a (protection from abuse) order, but he wouldn’t stop.”
Amber Short, a 2020 graduate of Derry Area High School, told police in her hospital room that McIntyre stabbed her mother and Rousson “with a gold dagger,” Trooper Daniel Pickard alleged in court documents.
State police also interviewed Rousson at the hospital. He said McIntyre began texting Amber on Saturday asking to reconcile, but was rejected.
Family members said McIntyre blamed Karen Short for keeping him from her daughter.
Early Sunday, Rousson told police, he was asleep in a first-floor recliner and Karen Short was asleep in another chair when they were awakened by McIntyre bursting through the kitchen door. As the two of them tried to force McIntyre back outside, Rousson told police, he was stabbed multiple times in his back during the struggle.
McIntyre then stabbed Karen Short in the chest, Rousson told police. He told police that McIntyre beat all three with a metal baseball bat.
”‘You are all going to die tonight,’” Rousson told police McIntyre said as he climbed the stairs to the second floor, where he attacked Amber in her bedroom. Police said she was beaten with the bat and bitten.
Amber Short told police that before fleeing the house, McIntyre told her the “attack was all your fault.” McIntyre allegedly also took Amber Short’s cellphone as well as one belonging to her mother.
Rousson reportedly called authorities from a nearby convenience store.
He “just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Shirley Felker, a sister of Tarr and Karen Short. “But Mr. Rousson was actually in the right place because without him fighting to protect Karen and Amber, we think they both would have been killed.”
Tarr said she moved to the region from California to be closer to family because of the covid-19 pandemic. She said Karen Short and her daughter were planning to move in with her in a nearby town as soon as their lease expired.
“They weren’t going to tell anyone, so he wouldn’t know where they were living to get away from him,” Tarr said.
She said her sister is sedated, making her unable to speak, and has a long road to recovery, as does Rousson.
Since 2017, online court records show McIntyre was twice arrested for making terroristic threats and harassment, including an incident in December that originated in the county jail, according to the complaint filed by county detectives.
The county probation office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.