Pittsburgh police say man attacked mail carrier, sparking SWAT response

Pittsburgh police arrested a man who they say attacked a mail carrier Wednesday and then barricaded himself in a home, sparking a SWAT response.

According to a criminal complaint, a mail carrier was parked at the intersection of Tarragonna and Alice streets in the city’s Bon Air neighborhood around 2:30 p.m., eating lunch in his vehicle, when a man approached the driver’s side door and began to punch and kick it.

The man, later identified as Jason Olszewski, 37, of Pittsburgh allegedly threw a small rock at the vehicle before the postal worker got out to confront him.

Once the mail carrier got out of the vehicle, the criminal complaint said, the man punched him, pushed him to the ground and walked away.

When officers approached a home where they had responded to calls about Olszewski before, his grandmother initially tried to tell officers he was not home. But Olszewski started at screaming at them from inside the house, the criminal complaint said.

Officers brought his grandmother out of the house, and Olszewski said he would not come out of the house and was putting on body armor, police said.

That sparked a full SWAT response. After negotiations with Olszewski, police said, he was taken into custody around 4:30 p.m., evaluated by medics and taken to the county jail.

Online court records show he was unable to post $10,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 25.