Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner charged with felonies in Detroit incident

Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner and her husband have been charged in connection to an incident involving police at a Detroit hotel earlier this month, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Wagner, 41, of Point Breeze, Pittsburgh, faces two felony counts of resisting and obstructing the police and a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct, Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Maria Miller said.

Wagner, who is up for re-election this year, could not immediately be reached for comment. She was not in her Downtown Pittsburgh office Wednesday afternoon.

Her husband, Khari Mosley, 42, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. He could not be reached for comment.

Detroit police arrested Wagner on March 6 during an altercation at the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel. Wagner and Mosley were staying at the hotel while visiting the city on a belated Valentine’s Day trip.

Police say they detained Mosley after he caused a disturbance at the hotel bar and arrested Wagner after she assaulted a police officer.

“The officers involved in this case used remarkable restraint while dealing with the combined actions of these defendants,” Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said Wednesday in a statement. “The evidence will show that during the incident Ms. Wagner and Mr. Mosley disparaged the officers and the hotel employees.”

Wagner has told the Tribune-Review that police mischaracterized the incident and described officers as the aggressors.

“I’m a guest at a hotel who was basically taken out of her bed and sleep after two hours because they wouldn’t recognize that two people can check into a hotel and have different last names, and any other differences that they wouldn’t be comfortable with,” Wagner told the Trib days after the incident.

According to prosecutors, police arrived at the hotel about 12:15 a.m. to investigate “a disturbance that was created by Mr. Mosley at the reception desk, in the elevator area and the entryway of the hotel.”

Mosley became “irate” and “confrontational” when hotel workers would not give him a key to his room, which was registered in Wagner’s name, Miller said. Police went to the room to confirm that Mosley was Wagner’s husband, and Mosley “eventually calmed down and was allowed in the room by the police,” Miller said.

Police began to leave but, while still in the hallway, heard a loud noise and shouting from inside the room, prompting them to return to investigate, Miller said. The officers then told the couple that Wagner could stay, but hotel security had asked Mosley to leave.

“When an officer tried to remove Mr. Mosley, Ms. Wagner prevented the officer from taking action,” Miller said. “It is alleged that she put her arm on him, and when he moved her arm to get into the room, she pushed his hand away.”

Officers placed Mosley in handcuffs and walked him to the elevator, but Wagner blocked the elevator door and refused to move, Miller said.

Prosecutors allege that Wagner “grabbed and pushed the officer, and he used his arm to move her during the assault, and she fell to the floor,” Miller said.

When the officer tried to handcuff Wagner, “she resisted and was uncooperative,” Miller said.

Wagner was arrested and taken to the Detroit Detention Center while her husband was allowed to go to a nearby hotel.

By Wagner’s account, she was “shocked and horrified” when she was awoken from a deep sleep by five men who included hotel security and Detroit police. She dismissed “conflicting statements by the chief of police that’s making it sound as if we had some type of argument or domestic.”

“Because you have such malignment of myself, my husband, my family, by things I know are not true,” Wagner said, “it’s trauma on top of trauma to have to have such a horrific experience and be characterized by innuendo as somebody who’s there because of domestic violence or something like that or intoxication.”

Wagner and Mosley have been ordered to turn themselves in for arraignment at the 36th District Court in Detroit.

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