3 arrested in assault of off-duty Pittsburgh police detective in Brookline bar

A Pittsburgh woman is charged with strangling and punching an off-duty detective at least 17 times in the face Saturday night at a South Hills bar.

Angie Hindman, 44, of Beechview was arrested and booked into Allegheny County Jail following the assault that broke out at Brook-line N Sinker bar and grill in the city’s Brookline neighborhood.

Hindman faces charges of strangulation, aggravated assault and retaliation against a witness. She is the mother of a suspect under criminal investigation by the detective in an unrelated case, police and court records show.

Around 11 p.m., several officers with Pittsburgh police’s Zone 6 station responded to a report of a fight outside the bar on Brookline Boulevard near Stebbins Avenue, a few blocks southwest of West Liberty Avenue.

“When we got out of our vehicles, we noticed that the fight had been broken up,” one of the responding Pittsburgh officers wrote in a criminal complaint.

They spotted the injured detective, identified as Michelle McHenry, walking along Brookline Boulevard toward a nearby CVS Pharmacy.

McHenry’s face was severely swollen and she had “red marks on the left side of her neck, consistent with strangulation,” the complaint said. She was taken by medics to UPMC Mercy hospital in stable condition.

Detective McHenry told investigators that she was at the bar on a night off work when she was “jumped” by Hindman, whom the detective knew to be the mother of someone she was investigating. Reasons for the investigation into Hindman’s son were not immediately clear.

“You’re not going to come after my son,” Hindman said to McHenry, according to the complaint. “He didn’t do nothing.”

The detective “was then grabbed and a struggle ensued,” the complaint said.

Both women fell to the ground before McHenry was “dragged outside,” where Hindman climbed on top of McHenry and began striking her, the complaint said.

Hindman applied pressure to McHenry’s neck and hit the detective in the face with closed-hand punches, all while continuing to yell, “My son didn’t do nothing!”

The fight was captured on city video surveillance cameras, which police used to identify Hindman and two others who officers say participated in the attack — Matthew Hindman, 41, and Brianna Holland, 23. Both face charges of simple assault and disorderly conduct, court records show.