Dec 22, 2015 3 min read

CANONSBURG – A series of text messages between a state trooper and his wife precipitated domestic violence in North Strabane Township’s Meadowbrook neighborhood last October, according to testimony Tuesday before District Judge Jay Weller.

Emily Campbell testified at her husband’s preliminary hearing about the actions that led up to Christopher Campbell’s arrest by North Strabane Township police on Oct. 25. Weller held for court the misdemeanor simple assault charge and a summary offense of harassment against Christopher Campbell, who has been suspended from his job without pay.

Under cross-examination by the attorney for Campbell, 33, the trooper’s wife acknowledged she had, via text message, threatened to kill her husband, said she wanted to scratch out his eyes and smack him and expressed hatred toward him because she, unwell, had been in charge of their young children all day while he spent that Sunday away from home drinking with friends.

The situation escalated once Christopher Campbell returned home and learned that the children had yet to be bathed before being put to bed. Emily Campbell described her husband as screaming and acting “out of control,” punching a hole in upstairs drywall, pulling down a shower curtain and smashing a wooden statue on their son’s crib. She said her husband struck her face with an open palm.

“I was screaming at him but I never put my hands on him,” Emily Campbell testified about the confrontation with her husband. Emily Campbell noted that her husband’s attorney, Christopher Blackwell, did not reveal in court the nature of the text-message replies from the trooper.

Emily Campbell said that on the day in question she had taken an over-the-counter cold medicine but she said she had not been drinking.

After being struck by her husband, she sought help from a Fieldbrook Drive neighbor, Douglas Digiovanni, and also summoned her husband’s parents so they could help defuse the situation. She returned home but came back to the Digiovannnis’ home a second time with her husband in pursuit.

“He admitted he grabbed her and put her down on the ground. He said she was out of control,” testified North Strabane Township Police Sgt. David Richards.

Christopher Campbell had scratches on his neck and a mark on his cheek, Richards told the court, which he thought could have been caused by someone attempting self-defense.

Emily Campbell had a mark on her face and by the next morning, a black eye had become apparent, Richards testified.

Christopher Campbell was “functioning pretty well” and Richards ordered no test of the trooper’s blood-alcohol level. “He wasn’t out of control. You could tell he was upset,” Richards told the district judge. Neither did Emily Campbell appear to be under the influence of alcohol, Richards testified.

Weller assented to Assistant District Attorney Kristin Clingerman’s request that Campbell have no contact with his wife. Although Emily Campbell told police Oct. 25 was not the first time her husband had struck her, no protection-from-abuse petition has been filed with Washington County Court.

Campbell joined the state police in June 2008 and had been assigned to Troop B’s Washington station since 2012. He remains free on $5,000 unsecured bond.

A state police internal affairs officer monitored the proceedings in Weller’s courtroom, but Blackwell said after Tuesday’s hearing that state police internal affairs begins its own investigation only after the case is resolved in court.