McClellan

A 43-year-old woman who police say tried to kill her family is now behind bars after she was disarmed by Altoona police inside her Juniata home.

Tracey L. Mc­Clellan was taken into custody about 5 a.m. Thursday after she was hit with a Taser by Altoona police officers who responded to 1417 N. 10th Ave. and found McClellan armed with two knives, including a large kitchen knife that she had used to stab her husband multiple times before her 15-year-old daughter called 911.

According to charges filed by Altoona police, McClellan told Altoona police Detective Sgt. Terry Merritts after her arrest that she suffers from depression and on Wednesday she became increasingly anxious and restless about how her inability to hold down a job had put a financial strain on her family.

In the early hours of Thursday, while her family was sleeping, McClellan started having thoughts that something “catastrophic” was going to happen to her husband and two children, ages 9 and 15, and as the night wore on, she started to think that an unknown person or persons were going to torture and kill them, police noted.

McClellan told police she then started pacing the house, checking windows and doors, while carrying a 7-inch Sheffield folding knife with a 4-inch blade as protection.

Ultimately, she decided she would kill her family and then herself to save them from being tortured and killed by someone else, police said.

McClellan first tried to kill the 9-year-old by smothering him with a pillow, but he woke up and wiggled his way out from beneath the pillow. She told police the boy was crying and asking her why she would try to suffocate him, which she said brought her back to reality. She said she laid down with the boy and comforted him until he fell asleep again.

After the boy fell asleep, McClellan got up and began to pace around the house until she again got the urge to kill her family.

After testing the sharpness of the folding knife on her forearm, she decided she needed a sharper knife so she retrieved one from the kitchen that police described as almost 13 inches long with an 8-inch blade.

Once she decided the kitchen knife would be sharp enough to kill her family, she walked into the 9-year-old’s bedroom and tried to slit the boy’s throat while he was sleeping, police said.

When McClellan pressed the blade to the boy’s neck, he woke up, grabbed the blade and deflected the knife away from him, police said.

The boy then ran to the master bedroom and hid, and McClellan then walked into another bedroom where her husband was sleeping. McClellan told police she believed at that moment it was her husband, who was lying on his side with his back to her, who was going to torture and kill her children.

McClellan told police she plunged the knife into the left side of her husband’s face, just missing his eye.

When her husband woke up screaming, she stabbed him three more times in the back before he escaped to a bathroom and hid, police said.

While McClellan attacked her husband, their 15-year-old daughter– who was by then hiding in the master bedroom with the 9-year-old — called 911.

When responding officers arrived, the door was locked, and as police tried to kick in the door and then break out a window to unlock it, the 15-year-old appeared and let them inside.

Once inside, officers could see McClellan at the top of the stairs, holding a knife. Police described McClellan as having “a thousand-yard stare” and she ignored commands to drop the knife.

Working in tandem, two officers, Cpl. Dan Vasil and Patrolman William Hanelly, slowly moved up the stairs with Vasil armed with a Taser and Hanelly covering him with his gun, police noted.

Once upstairs, the officers had to negotiate a blind corner, and when they did, they found they were only 10 to 15 feet from McClellan, who was at the end of a hallway. Police could see that McClellan was holding two knives in her fists, with the blades running along her forearms, pointed downward.

Her husband was in a bathroom halfway between the officers and McClellan, with the door open.

Police said the short distance between McClellan and the officers, as well as her husband, made the situation dangerous. McClellan ignored Vasil’s repeated demands to drop the knife and even refused to back into a bedroom so police could get her husband out of the bathroom.

Police said McClellan made comments about police lies and that they were going to kill her children, so the decision was made to hit McClellan with a Taser.

As another officer moved up the steps with a Taser, McClellan began arguing with her wounded husband, commenting he would kill them the next day, so after calling out, “Taser, Taser, Taser,” police used it on McClellan, hitting her in the torso.

McClellan immediately dropped the small knife but was still holding on to the kitchen knife, and as an officer pointed his gun at her and told her to drop it, the knife slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor, police said.

McClellan was taken into custody after she was taken to the floor by Hanelly and “swarmed by other officers,” Merritts indicated in the charges.

McClellan said later she only dropped the knives because she had been hit with the Taser.

McClellan’s husband and both children were taken to UPMC Altoona for examination and treatment, and police pointed out that while the 15-year-old was not injured, the boy suffered cuts to his neck, two fingers on his left hand and left arm.

McClellan’s husband’s injuries were life-threatening, including a collapsed lung from the stabbing. Police said he was in serious but stable condition after emergency surgery.

McClellan is now charged multiple felonies that include two counts of attempted homicide as well as four counts of aggravated assault and two counts endangering the welfare of a child, along with misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person and possessing instruments of crime.

McClellan remains in Blair County Prison in lieu of the $100,000 cash bail set by Magisterial District Judge Steven Jackson at her arraignment Thursday night.

A preliminary hearing is slated for July 17 at Central Court.

Mirror Staff Writer Greg Bock is at 946-7458.