Murrsyville man held for trial after attack with baseball bat

At first, Elizabeth Hobbs thought the baseball bat a Murrysville man grabbed out of his backseat during a fight was plastic.

She quickly realized it was metal as Reno James Roberts, 26, began attacking her and her boyfriend with it outside a Salem gas station Oct. 16. Hobbs said she tried to shield her boyfriend from the bat, but both of them ended up in a hospital.

Roberts was saying “very hurtful homophobic things” during an argument at the GetGo station on Route 22 moments before the attack, Hobbs said.

“I somehow thought because Reno knew me, he wasn’t going to hit me,” she testified Tuesday during a preliminary hearing. “The look in his eyes, I don’t know, the look in his eyes, he was just so angry at me, he didn’t even want to think of me as a person.”

Two counts each of aggravated assault and simple assault were held for court at the conclusion of Roberts’ preliminary hearing. State police said Roberts fled after the 10 p.m. attack with his mother and troopers spent a few days looking for him with an arrest warrant.

One of the people who was attacked reported later that Reno contacted them through Facebook Messenger and used derogatory terms for homosexual and transgender people, according to court papers.

Hobbs said she and Roberts previously were in a relationship. She was going into the convenience store when Roberts pulled into the lot and yelled at her. Both she and her boyfriend asked him to leave, she testified.

Hobbs testified they were hit multiple times by Roberts’ punches and the bat. They both sustained concussions and bruising on their arms, she said.

Defense attorney Edward Nicholson suggested Roberts was acting in self defense.

“My client, Mr. Roberts, was not the instigator,” Nicholson argued. “He didn’t initiate the attack, he was merely defending himself.”

Assistant District Attorney Jeremy Mains responded that the fight escalated because of Roberts’ actions.

“It was the defendant’s choice to retrieve the bat and beat two different people with the bat at a gas station,” he argued.

Roberts will remain at the Westmoreland County Prison without bail. District Judge Judith P. Petrush rejected Nicholson’s request that Roberts be freed on his own recognizance to have his mother watch over him.

Mains pointed out that Roberts’ mother was present during the attack.

“That gives me no peace of mind whatsoever,” he said.