Jury acquits man in domestic case

Shoenfelt found guilty on lone misdemeanor count of assault

HOLLIDAYSBURG -- A Blair County jury acquitted a Roaring Spring man Thursday of felony offenses and all but one of the misdemeanor counts he faced during a two-day trial on domestic assault charges.

Matthew T. Shoenfelt, 47, who testified in his own defense Thursday morning, wiped away tears of relief in the early evening after the jury returned verdicts mostly in his favor.

"This has been going on for three years now," an emotional Shoenfelt said outside the courthouse.

The jury of nine women and three men acquitted Shoenfelt of two felony counts of strangulation, a felony count of kidnapping and three misdemeanor counts of unlawful restraint, terroristic threats and simple assault by physical menace.

It returned one guilty verdict on a count of simple assault by causing bodily injury.

Sentencing is slated for July 18 on that offense and a summary count of harassment, as rendered by President Judge Elizabeth Doyle, who presided over the trial.

Defense attorney Michael B. Cohen, who put Shoenfelt on the witness stand to tell his version of what happened three years ago at an Altoona residence with his now former wife, praised his client outside the courtroom.

"I think his testimony was critical, that his character came out and that together, they were reflected in the jury's verdicts," Cohen said.

Assistant District Attorney Ian Hausner asked the jury to convict Shoenfelt of all charges that developed from the wife's allegations about Shoenfelt's behavior on March 30, 2019, at her California Avenue residence in Altoona.

The woman accused Shoenfelt of striking her, biting her, squeezing her throat and threatening her with a switchblade knife. The fight developed, she testified Wednesday, while she was intoxicated and after she rebuffed his sexual advances and spit in his face.

Shoenfelt told the jury on Thursday that his wife was so intoxicated that night that she couldn't stand on her own feet to get to the second-floor bedroom to go to bed.

"I physically carried her up the stairs," he said.

He said he helped her remove her clothes and was attempting to remove bobby pins from her hair when she started swatting at him.

He accused her of becoming furious with him before taking off her wedding ring, which she threw against the wall. In response, he said he grabbed his switchblade knife and poked at his ring finger that contained a tattooed letter from her name.

"I said I guess you don't want to be married anymore," Shoenfelt testified.

He told the jury that his then wife started berating him and telling him her ex-fiance was a better lover. He said she spit three times in his face and started kicking at him.

Shoenfelt, who became emotional on the witness stand, said he remembers asking: "What are you doing? What's the problem here?"

When the wife testified, she said she pleaded with Shoenfelt to let her go downstairs to use the bathroom.

"She did ask me to go to the bathroom," Shoenfelt said on the witness stand.

When she had difficulty going downstairs, he said he picked her up and carried her to the first floor, then watched her naked body stumble toward a door and run outside to California Avenue where she went into a slide like a baseball player and cried out for help.

"I scooped her up and brought her back into the house," he said.

The wife told the jury that she fled the house because she was in fear of Shoenfelt and that after she fled, it was Shoenfelt who knocked her down and attempted to drag her to the house, then picked her up and carried her back.

Cohen told the jury in his closing argument that based on the testimony, it's not surprising that the wife sustained bruising and an abrasion on her hip. But no one suggested the need for medical attention, the defense attorney pointed out.

Hausner acknowledged his disappointment with the acquittals that the jury rendered after three hours of deliberations.

"They weren't the verdicts I wanted, but I respect the jury's decisions," he said.

In his closing argument, he told the jury that it was the wife's testimony "that showed a natural progression of how things played out that night."

He also pointed out that the woman no longer communicates with her former husband and gains nothing by coming to court to testify "about the worst night of her life."

The former wife, who was in the courtroom for closing arguments, did not return for the announcement of the verdict.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.