'Changed man' gets probation for police standoff and parking lot attack

On Thursday, nearly two years after he barricaded himself in his Hempfield home and tried to kill himself, George Gardner claimed he was a new man.

Gardner pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that stemmed from two separate incidents in 2021 in which authorities said he shot at his wife and later held police at bay for about four hours before he shot himself in the head.

More than three months earlier in a parking lot of a North Huntingdon fast food restaurant police said he attacked four people and two police officers.

“I am not the same man I was,” Gardner said shortly before he was sentenced to serve up to five years on probation.

Gardner, 48, was sentenced by Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Christopher Feliciani to serve five years on probation.

“I really don’t see any benefit for sending you to jail at this point,” Feliciani said, noting statements of support from Gardner’s wife and father-in-law about how he has turned his life around over the last two years.

Defense attorney Tim Dawson said Gardner was in a coma for three weeks after he shot himself in the head at the end of the Nov. 2021 standoff at his Edna Road home.

“George died that day and a new George emerged. He had last rites three times and now he has reunited with his family. I’ve never seen a client literally die, come back and become a completely different person,” Dawson said.

The standoff came after police said Gardner shot at his wife through the windshield of a family car as she drove him to a liquor store.

Police said Gardner later that day barricaded himself in his home and during the four-hour siege threatened to hurt authorities if they attempted to enter the residence. Witnesses claimed police fired tear gas into the home before Gardner emerged on his own with a wound to his head.

Jessica Gardner told the judge her husband has undergone treatment for mental health and alcohol addiction issues and is a different man than he was two years ago.

“I’ve seen a tremendous change. He’s just a different guy in every way,” Jessica Gardner said.

The shooting and standoff came months after a July 25, 2021 incident in the parking lot of North Huntingdon McDonald’s, where police said George Gardner was drunk and assaulted one man with a plastic ax handle, attempted to ram his vehicle into three others, resisted arrest and kicked and spit at police officers.

He pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault in both the shooting and McDonald’s incidents. He also pleaded guilty to additional charges of reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, drunk driving, drug possession and simple assault.

Prosecutors dropped six counts aggravated assault and two charges that he made terrorist threats as part of a plea bargain deal that included no sentencing recommendations from the district attorney’s office.

Westmoreland County District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli, in an emailed statement issued Thursday afternoon, declined to comment on the sentence Gardner received.

“The sentencing was at the discretion of the judge,” Ziccarelli said.

In addition to the probation term, Gardner was also ordered to serve three months on house arrest for the drunk driving conviction.