A 43-year-old Greensburg man accused of duct-taping, choking and threatening to kill two women during a June attack in McKeesport was finally caught more than two months later, hiding under a false name at a Pittsburgh hospital. Allegheny County Sheriff's deputies apprehended David Cochran at Allegheny General Hospital, where authorities say he was visiting a patient and had been admitted himself under an alias.
According to TribLIVE, Cochran now faces a lengthy list of charges filed by McKeesport Police, including kidnapping, strangulation, intimidation of witnesses or victims, possession of instruments of a crime, criminal attempt and false imprisonment. He also faces two counts each of simple assault, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, unlawful restraint and terroristic threats. The charges stem from an incident police say unfolded on June 20 at a home on the 2200 block of Sylvan Avenue in McKeesport.
A Night of Escalating Violence on Sylvan Avenue
Per the criminal complaint, Cochran allegedly assaulted two women inside a house all three occupied, at one point threatening, “I'll kill both of you right now.” When a second woman tried to intervene by jumping on Cochran's back, he allegedly forced her into a bedroom and locked her inside, according to the same account. That woman told him she would call police, and Cochran allegedly responded by threatening to get into a shootout with officers if they were summoned, per the complaint.
The first victim's statement describes a brutal escalation: Cochran allegedly threw her to the ground, punched her several times, smashed a mirror into her face and held a knife against her rib cage. She told police he bound her mouth, hands and feet with tape and choked her with an extension cord. She lost a tooth in the assault, per her statement, and police documented abrasions, a cut above her left eyebrow and bleeding, swollen lips.
A Desperate Escape
The first victim told police she managed to cut the tape on her wrist using the same knife Cochran had held against her ribs. She then jumped out of a window onto a roof and ran down the street to the front steps below, according to her statement. The second woman had refused to leave the house while all three were present inside.
Online court documents listed no attorney for Cochran as of the report, and it remains unclear how he managed to check into a Pittsburgh hospital under a false identity while wanted on multiple warrants. When deputies located him, they served him with three Allegheny County bench warrants and one Westmoreland County bench warrant at the hospital, according to TribLIVE's reporting.
Fugitive Squad Tracks Down Wanted Man Across County Lines
The arrest fell to the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office, which maintains dedicated Fugitive Squads within its Investigations Division tasked with tracking wanted individuals and executing criminal and bench warrants across the county, according to the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office. Cochran's path from Greensburg, in Westmoreland County, to the alleged crime scene in McKeesport, in Allegheny County, and finally to his arrest at Allegheny General Hospital on Pittsburgh's North Side spans roughly 20 miles of driving distance between Greensburg and McKeesport, with central Pittsburgh sitting another 15 miles northwest, per Rome2Rio.
Notably, the arrest came just over a week after Allegheny County Sheriff Kevin Kraus issued a policy directive barring sheriff's deputies from guarding hospitalized inmates, shifting all hospital inmate security duties to county jail corrections officers, as reported by TribLIVE. That change had taken effect just eight days before deputies apprehended Cochran at the same type of medical facility.
The Charges Cochran Faces Carry Steep Penalties
Kidnapping is classified under Pennsylvania law as a first-degree felony — the state's highest non-homicide offense level — regardless of the victim's age, meaning a conviction could carry up to 20 years in prison, according to Lauren Wimmer Criminal Defense. Strangulation against a household member is a second-degree felony carrying up to 10 years, per Pennsylvania statute cited by Ciccarelli Law Offices; the state added the dedicated strangulation law in 2016 specifically to close gaps between simple and aggravated assault charges in domestic violence cases. Separately, possessing an instrument of a crime — such as tape or an electrical cord — with intent to use it criminally is a first-degree misdemeanor under state law, according to Justia Law, while witness or victim intimidation charges escalate to a felony when someone tries to stop a victim from contacting police or testifying.
The McKeesport Police Department, which filed the charges, operates out of 201 Lysle Boulevard and is one of the few municipal agencies in Allegheny County with its own dedicated Detective Bureau, covering juvenile, narcotics, computer crimes and criminal investigations, according to the City of McKeesport. The department has partnered with county and state authorities on violent-crime enforcement before; last September, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office joined the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office and McKeesport Police on a “Summer Suppression” operation that netted more than a dozen arrests targeting violent crime and illegal firearms in the city.
It remains unclear whether legal counsel has been assigned to Cochran ahead of a preliminary hearing, and details of how he obtained a false identity to check into the hospital have not been disclosed. This is not the only violent crime case Hoodline has tracked in McKeesport this year — the city saw two women hospitalized after a separate assault in May and a strangulation case tied to a Snapchat meet-up on a PRT bus earlier this summer.
