Sanders

HOLLIDAYSBURG — Closing arguments begin today in the case of a city man accused of attacking multiple customers at the Sheetz at 700 Chestnut Ave. in June 2025.

Terrell Jarod Sanders, 41, is accused of entering the Sheetz in the early morning hours of June 28, 2025, causing a disturbance and punching several people. Sanders appeared to be intoxicated at the time, police testified.

Testifying in his own defense before President Judge Wade A. Kagarise and a jury of six men and nine women, including alternates, Sanders said he didn’t remember the incident and “didn’t go to Sheetz to hurt anyone.”

When questioned by Chief Public Defender Julia Burke, Sanders said he remembered going to Sheetz with a friend and then waking up “in the precinct.”

Sanders said it was his friend’s birthday when they went to Sheetz and met up with the first victim, who was referred to as “John Doe” throughout the proceedings. The first victim is his friend’s brother and “like family,” Sanders said.

When asked about the second victim, who took the stand earlier in the trial and identified herself as Sanders’s on-again off-again girlfriend, Sanders said he didn’t remember most of the incident.

“I have never put hands on a woman in my life,” Sanders said.

Upon cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Mark Bushnell replayed surveillance footage from Sheetz that had already been played for the jury. He then asked Sanders to verify that it was him in the video interacting with the victims, to which Sanders said it was.

Bushnell questioned if the third victim had done anything to provoke Sanders’ attack, to which Sanders said “I don’t even know (him)” and that he owed the victim an apology.

“He did nothing to me,” Sanders said. “I was in the wrong. None of these people did anything to me.”

During Thursday’s proceedings, the female victim testified that Sanders was living at her residence but it was a coincidence they were at Sheetz at the same time because she was out with a friend.

When Burke asked what she witnessed, the victim said she saw Sanders arguing with a man before getting into a physical confrontation.

“I tried to grab Terrell’s arm to stop him” but got “knocked over,” the victim said, noting she suffered a small cut to her earlobe from an earring.

When asked, the victim said she hadn’t been afraid of Sanders during the incident.

Bushnell called a number of witnesses to testify about the incident, including Sheetz employees who were present at the time.

The first employee to take the stand said she worked at the Chestnut Avenue location for 13 years but transferred to a Tyrone store two months after the assaults because “this incident scared me.”

When asked to describe what she witnessed, the employee said “at first I thought they were joking” in regard to Sanders accusing the first victim of calling the police.

“(Sanders) hit him in his stomach,” the employee said. “The rest is a blur after that.”

The Sheetz supervisor, who was on duty that day and was the one who called police, told the jury that Sanders “got upset” and said “he wasn’t going to go to jail again.”

Under questioning by Bushnell, the supervisor said Sanders was just “punching and punching and punching” and saw Sanders enter the store’s vestibule area. It was there that the supervisor saw Sanders attack the third victim, she said.

“There was blood splattering,” the supervisor said. “(Sanders) got (the third victim) on the ground and stomped on his head.”

The third victim testified that as he was entering Sheetz and “the next thing I know, I got assaulted.”

All the third victim could recall was “getting hit in the face” and ending up on the floor, he said. The next day, when he was “still in a lot of pain,” he went to UPMC Altoona for treatment.

“I couldn’t see out of my eye; there was pus coming out of my eye,” the third victim said.

He said he lost his employment as a result of the eye injury because a “major aspect” of his job was inspecting items for defects.

On cross-examination, Burke asked the man about his hospital visit, to which he said he waited five hours before being seen. He confirmed he left before treatment was complete because “it was taking too long.”

He said he went to urgent care in July for further treatment but admitted that no doctor diagnosed permanent eye damage.

Altoona Detective William Baker, who played the 26-minute video showing the entire Sheetz incident, said when he spoke to the third victim at the hospital, he “was in a fairly extreme state of distress” and had “fairly extreme injuries.”

Bushnell then showed photos of the second and third victim’s injuries.

When Burke asked Baker what the purpose of the photos was, Baker said it was to show the victims’ injuries. Burke further questioned Baker, stating “the purpose of the photos is to show injury, but they don’t show injury” to which Baker said “not all of them.”

Baker said there were no additional photos.

After both the prosecution and defense rested their cases, and the jury exited the courtroom, Burke made a motion to dismiss the felony counts of aggravated assault and intimidating a witness/victim, as well as the misdemeanor counts of possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Sanders also faces two misdemeanor counts of simple assault, a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct and related summary charges.

Burke told Kagarise that the charge of aggravated assault was not consistent with the testimony or evidence. In regard to the other charges, Burke said there was no evidence that Sanders actually tried to prevent anyone from calling the police and that no one testified to Sanders having controlled substances or drug paraphernalia.

Kagarise told the attorneys that he would issue his final ruling on the matter prior to their closing arguments, but said his intent was to grant Burke’s request for the dismissal of the drug charges while denying the dismissal of felony aggravated assault.

Sanders has been held at the Blair County Prison in lieu of $200,000 since his arrest on June 28.

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor-Musselman is at 814-946-7458.