Prosecutors contend North Belle Vernon bar stabbings started with a joke

Westmoreland County prosecutors contend three patrons in a North Belle Vernon bar were stabbed three years ago because of a quip about their attacker’s criminal record.

Assistant district attorney Steven Reddy said the March 7, 2019 assaults at Just A Tavern nearly turned deadly for a woman and two male friends.

“Miraculously, no one was killed. We’re here because the defendant’s response to an innocuous comment was to stab them,” Reddy said, during opening statements made Monday in a trial of Eric Cook, 46, of Donora, Washington County. Cook is charged with attempted homicide.

Prosecutors contend Cook’s accusers sustained substantial injuries in the knife attack, including one woman whose femoral artery was slashed and required emergency intervention by an off-duty emergency medical technician at the bar. Two other men sustained multiple stab wounds that required medical treatment.

Cook is charged with three counts each of attempted homicide and simple assault and six related offenses of aggravated assault. He has been in jail in lieu of a $500,000 bond since his arrest three weeks after the stabbings.

Reddy said witnesses saw Cook with a knife before he encountered his victims, who included one woman who told police she had known from school years earlier.

The violence erupted after Cook disclosed he had recently returned home after serving a long prison sentence and was greeted with a joke from one of the victims who police contend quipped he should not list that fact on a resume, according to court records.

Reddy, in his opening statement, did not disclose the nature of the joke that led to the stabbings.

Defense attorney James Robinson said Cook acted in self defense.

Robinson told jurors that Cook’s accusers started a fight that resulted in “Pandemonium” and that he was headbutted, punched and knocked to the ground and only used his knife after the fight turned into an “all out brawl.”

“Mr. Cook was only defending himself. He had no choice to stand his ground and defend himself,” Robinson said.

Robinson did not address the prosecution’s theory that a joke about Cook’s criminal record is what had started the fight.

According to court records Cook pleaded guilty to federal drug charges about a decade ago and was sentenced to serve a 10-year prison sentence.

Testimony in the trial is expected to begin Tuesday.