Last weekend, a Pennsylvania man repeatedly and fatally stabbed his mother in broad daylight in front of a gathering of scared witnesses on a roadway.
Brian Rebold, 38, faces criminal homicide and first-degree murder charges in the death of Diana Rebold, 73, on Sunday.
The defendant is believed to have made the 911 call. Several witnesses would reportedly confirm details of the disagreement, which resulted in an assault and a horrifically gruesome case of purported matricide.
The incident occurred at Arnold, a small village on the Allegheny River in the far northeast of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
The Arnold Police Department received a complaint of a man stabbing a woman at about 5:38 p.m. on August 4, according to the Westmoreland County District Attorney’s Office.
According to a press release, the woman was discovered “lying unresponsive in the street and bleeding profusely from her head,” and was recognized as the suspect’s mother. She sustained multiple stab wounds to the skull and was pronounced dead at the site of the crime.
By the end of the day, squad cars from the nearby New Kensington Police Department and local fire trucks had gathered in the 100 block of Liberty Avenue, where the septuagenarian mother lay lifeless.
“I saw the lights, and then I saw her body lying on the ground covered, and I just started screaming hysterically to my husband,” Charisse Campise, who lives in a house on the block where the murder took place, told Pittsburgh-based ABC affiliate WTAE. “The other day I had seen him out there yelling, but he and his mother got into an argument and this is what ended up happening.”
According to police, the victim’s son was covered in blood when they arrived. He was taken to prison immediately and without incident.
While the exact motivation for the woman’s murder is unknown and has not been proposed by law enforcement, Brian Rebold freely acknowledged stabbing his mother to death, inflicting many wounds on her back and throat, according to prosecutors.
The defendant also allegedly told police that the murder weapon had been tossed into another neighbor’s front yard. Investigators eventually retrieved the deadly knife.
Another person who lives on the block stated the victim’s fight with her alleged killer was unusual.
“I didn’t see any conflicts between them. “I never heard any arguing,” next-door neighbor Steve Mobley told Pittsburgh’s NBC affiliate WPXI. “I had chatted with him before, and I felt something was odd about him. But I’m not sure what it is, and I assumed he required treatment.”
Police informed WTAE that the victim and her son lived together.
“There was arguing from witnesses around the area, which led them into the street, where they found them both,” Arnold Police Chief Josh Stanga told the TV station.
According to a public information report regarding Diana Rebold, an autopsy is still scheduled to ascertain the cause and manner of her death.
The defendant is being held in the Westmoreland County Jail without bond. He was arraigned on Monday morning, and a preliminary hearing in the case is now scheduled for August 15.
Law&Crime contacted the Westmoreland County District Attorney’s Office for more information on this topic but received no answer by the time of publishing.