Welder living in Uniontown indicted on D.C. riot counts

A traveling welder from Kentucky living in Uniontown has been indicted by a federal grand jury on 14 counts related to his alleged actions during the U.S. Capitol riots on Jan. 6, including pepper-spraying police.

Peter Schwartz, 47, was indicted Wednesday in the District of Columbia. He had previously been charged by complaint following an FBI investigation. Prosecutors have 30 days to bring an indictment following the filing of a complaint.

The indictment accuses him of numerous offenses involving the use of pepper spray on police and storming the Capitol grounds.

During a preliminary hearing in Pittsburgh last month, an FBI agent testified that Schwartz, a convicted felon, is seen in videos spraying Metropolitan Police Department officers from handheld pepper spray canisters and also deploying spray from larger canisters taken from the police. He is also seen wielding a wooden club.

Agent Matt Solomon said Schwartz, of Owensboro, Ky., later bragged about what he’d done on Facebook and in texts to associates, telling one person that “I started that” in reference to the riot and saying, “I stole their [expletive] and used it on them.”

In another text, according to court testimony, he said, “I got some of their blood and proud of it!”

Schwartz had been living in Uniontown with his wife for several months before the riot and working as a welder for a local company.

The Pittsburgh FBI arrested him outside his rented home. He remains in U.S. custody pending trial in Washington, D.C.

A Brighton Heights woman charged with killing her husband pretended not to know where he was while helping his family search for him, police said in a criminal complaint.

Janet L. Winbush, 50, was charged Monday with homicide and abuse of a corpse in the death of Deric Davis, 53. Police found his bodyoutside Ms. Winbush’s duplex in the 3200 block of California Avenue on Dec. 22, Pittsburgh police detectives said in the complaint.

Ms. Winbush was in custody after turning herself in to police Tuesday.

Mr. Davis had been dead for more than two weeks before his family reported him missing Dec. 21, saying they hadn’t heard from him in several days, police said. Witnesses told police Mr. Davis lived with Ms. Winbush part time at the home, and that the two had a “tumultuous, on-again/offagain” relationship.

The criminal complaint said relatives told police that the couple had a daughter together and said Mr. Davis planned to divorce Ms. Winbush due to her “crazy” behavior.

Family members, including the couple’s unidentified daughter, described Ms. Winbush as a jealous, “aggressive and threatening” woman, who wanted to control Mr. Davis, the complaint said.

When their daughter came home from school for the holidays Dec. 18, she was surprised that her father didn’t meet her at the Greyhound bus station as he normally would have, she told police. She eventually alerted other family members, who were already concerned, and they all began to search for Mr. Davis, the complaint said.

Ms. Winbush joined Mr. Davis’ family at his Wilkinsburg apartment and made calls to hospitals asking whether Mr. Davis was a patient, police said.

Mr. Davis’ brother reported him missing, stating he hadn’t seen his brother in two weeks and was told by Mr. Davis’ employer that he hadn’t shown up at work for weeks.

When police approached the front door of Ms. Winbush’s home Dec. 22, they said they smelled the odor of decaying flesh and found Mr. Davis’ body wrapped in garbage bags and duct tape beneath a deflated air mattress near the front porch. He had a three-inch stab wound to his right clavicle and a cut on his right palm.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office later determined Mr. Davis died from a stab wound and ruled it a homicide.

When police discovered the body, they said a car registered to Ms. Winbush was outside the home. They called for anyone inside the home to come out.

When no one answered, police broke in and found Ms. Winbush in the basement. She was detained for questioning, and confessed in a Dec. 22 interview that she had stabbed Mr. Davis in self-defense, the complaint said.

She told police she had argued with Mr. Davis on Dec. 6 and said he had hit and choked her. She said Mr. Davis grabbed a knife from the kitchen and came at her with it. She said she was able to get the knife out of Mr. Davis’ hands before she stabbed him in self-defense.

What happened after that was a “blur,” she told police.

At the home, detectives found blood drops on the steps leading up to her second-floor apartment. They also noted that a sofa and portions of a carpet in the living room were discolored due to bleach, police said. Both contained blood that had been cleaned up, police said.

Yellow rubber cleaning gloves were found draped over the edge of the kitchen sink, as well as a nearempty roll of duct tape on a closet shelf, the complaint said.