Fugitive attempts suicide in motel standoff
Marc Anthony Filippino, the East McKeesport man suspected in three attacks on women in Westmoreland County's Wimmerton development, cut his wrist and throat Saturday after police surrounded his Washington Township motel room. He was flown to UPMC Presbyterian hospital in Pittsburgh, police said. The hospital declined to release his status.
State troopers fired two volleys of tear gas into Room 3 of the Country Manor Motel at 12:21 p.m., 45 minutes after their last communication with Filippino. They found him on the floor of the unit's bathroom, seriously injured but still conscious.
No one else was in the unit.
Police had spoken with Filippino by phone since 8 a.m. They used a remote camera to look into the room's window, but they could not see the 30-year-old, who fled a Monroeville hospital Thursday, a day after he was to have faced charges from the Aug. 14 Wimmerton attack.
Filippino had been arrested outside Wimmerton, a large housing development along Route 30 in Unity Township. Police allege the laid-off steelworker entered a 45-year-old woman's home and attacked her as she slept. He fled when the woman cried out for help, police said.
Police also suspect Filippino in the July 21, 2000, beating of another Wimmerton woman; the July 8 rape of a third Wimmerton woman; and the June 9, 2000, rape of a Penn Township woman.
Filippino was free on $100,000 bond when he overdosed in a suicide attempt Wednesday, police said. His father found him in his 1140 Park Ave. home.
Police spoke to the elder Filippino during the 4 1/2-hour standoff Saturday. No relatives came to the scene.
Filippino had checked into the $37 room late Friday night. Bill Wolf, the motel's owner, let him stay for free.
'He looked ragged,' Wolf said. 'He said he'd been walking all night. I took him in as a hardship case, and he said he'd leave in the morning.
'You try to help a guy down on his luck, and this is what happens.'
Police found Filippino after a Washington Township officer saw a stolen Plymouth Voyager at the Glassmart convenience store on Route 66, just north of the Country Manor Motel. Police believe Filippino took the cranberry-colored minivan from a home on Trouthaven Drive in Murrysville.
At 8 a.m. yesterday, state troopers tried to enter the motel room, using a key provided by manager Ron Doverspike. Filippino, who had barricaded the door with furniture, yelled that he had a gun, Doverspike said.
'Right away they spread out,' Doverspike said. 'They told me to get out of there, and I did.'
He hid behind a cinder block wall at an adjacent car wash.
Police evacuated the motel's other 24 rooms and closed all four lanes of Route 66. Washington Township firefighters directed northbound traffic onto Route 380.
'They had the place surrounded,' said Jack Horneman of North Apollo, who passed by on his way to breakfast. 'Everyone was standing out there with their guns drawn.'
Police repeatedly tried to coax Filippino out of the room. 'We were talking to him the whole time,' said Tpr. Jeanne Martin, a spokeswoman for state police Troop A in Greensburg.
Early in the standoff, Filippino said he would surrender after a few more minutes, Martin said. The agreed time passed with no sign of him.
At 11:36 a.m., Filippino said he needed another 15 minutes, Martin said. Troopers stormed the room 45 minutes later.
